Stories come and stories go in the NBA, but one of the things the first half of the season has made clear is that the Detroit Pistons are here to stay. Last year’s Eastern Conference 6-seed was knocked out in the first round of the playoffs by the New York Knicks in a hard-fought six-game series, but this year they’ve been atop the conference almost since the word go.
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The Pistons are currently 28-10, and only the defending champion Thunder have a better record. A big reason for their success is the way Cade Cunningham has continued to level up. The former No. 1 overall pick is playing like an MVP with 26.7 points and 9.7 assists per game. That latter number is the second-highest rate in the league, but Cade is doing so much more, including being one of the top rebounding guards there is.
Anyone not taking the Pistons seriously by this point isn’t paying attention. Carmelo Anthony. The Knicks superfan saw how difficult Cade and the Pistons made life for his team last year, and after witnessing the 31-point whooping the Pistons put on them last Monday, he was ready to make some bold statements on the newest episode of 7PM in Brooklyn.
“Bro, they can win a championship this year,” Melo said to his cohost Kazeem Famuyide. “You gotta go through OKC, and they tough, they should repeat. But Detroit could get there. They just made up, they built different, they’re like Detroit tough.”
Melo took notice during last year’s playoffs that if Cade could take his leadership to another level, “it’s over” for the rest of the league. “And so far this season, he’s figured it out,” Melo claimed.
“When you learn how to lead, when you learn how to manipulate the game with the ball in your hands, and you can score, you start influencing all aspects of the game,” he asserted.
Cade dropped an easy 29 points and 13 assists on the Knicks in only 29 minutes last week, but he’s had to sit out the Pistons’ last two games with a wrist sprain that still has him day-to-day. Detroit has also been without rising star center Jalen Duren for the past four games with a sprained ankle, but both franchise cornerstones are expected back soon.
Last year was the first winning record the Pistons had posted in a decade, and a major departure from their five straight seasons of winning 20 or fewer games.
This year is set to easily surpass those 44 wins thanks to Cade’s leadership, the fastest pace the team has played at since the early Isiah Thomas days, and what’s easily the highest offensive rating in franchise history.
The Pistons haven’t won a playoff series since 2008. For context, Cade was only six years old at that time. Now, he’s not only the future, he’s the present, and the biggest impediment in the East to Melo’s Knicks. The crazy thing is, he’s still getting better.
