Cade Cunningham landed at No. 3 on FanSided's 25-under-25 NBA Player Rankings this season, ranking the best young players in the NBA. Check out the rest of the list here.
There's a vicious cycle that happens with young athletes. I'm talking about the new pros, freshly drafted and in their first year or two in the NBA, NFL or whatever. We are not a patient society, so we want results, and we want them immediately. If you're drafted No. 1 then you must be good, right? Well then how come you're not leading your team to a title already?
It's maddening that we rinse and repeat this same destructive way of thinking over and over again. Quarterbacks have it worse than anybody, as they're thrown out with yesterday's trash at the slightest hint of not being an MVP candidate. That's why we see guys like Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold bounce around the league before finally evolving into the players they were always meant to be. Now Mayfield is a leading MVP candidate while Darnold is once again a difference-maker on a winning team, and they're on their fourth and fifth teams, respectively.
Quarterback may be the only position in sports where the scrutiny is worse than it is for a top NBA pick. There are only five players on the court per side at any given time, and so the spotlight shines white-hot on the players who are the first to shake Adam Silver's hand on draft night. I'd actually argue it's easier to come in and succeed right away at quarterback than it is to take a lottery-winning team (how's being called a lottery prize for pressure?) and make them a contender quickly. In the NFL, progress can happen overnight, as we often see teams go from worst to first. In the NBA, progress can be glacial. Development and maturation matter.
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Cade Cunningham has stepped out of the darkness
Cade Cunningham fell victim to this pressure early in his career. The No.1 pick out of Oklahoma State, he was hailed as the savior of a Pistons team that had won 20 games in each of the two seasons before he got there. Mason Plumlee led the team in win shares before his arrival, which I guess is how you land the top overall pick in the first place.
Cunningham has put up counting stats his entire time in the league, but he wasn't viewed early on as a winning player, an unfair assessment considering the quality of the players and coaches he was surrounded with. For context, Monty Williams was given about $65 million just so the Pistons could get rid of him. That says it all.
Cunningham averaged 17.4 points and 5.6 assists in his rookie season, then he missed nearly all of his second year with a stress fracture in his leg. It didn't do much to stall his development though, because he's raised those numbers every single year. His 3-point shooting also took a big leap in Year 3, as did his overall efficiency.
He isn't a mega athlete that can blow by defenders at will, but Cunningham's game is an old school combination of physicality and touch. He has the ball in his hands more than nearly anyone in the league, and though he could stand to get more easy looks on his drives, he's one of the best finishers of difficult shots out there.
Cunningham's defense took a big leap last year. New head coach J.B. Bickerstaff deserves some credit for completely flipping the team's culture, but part of Cunningham's improvement just comes down to getting more reps and growing up. Even by the end of last season, he'd barely played over 200 pro games in his career, so he's still a work in progress at that end of the floor.
Think of Cunningham's first three seasons as an internship where he learned the ropes. Last year was his true arrival, as he finished seventh in scoring, fourth in assists and third in the Most Improved Player award. He also made his first All-Star team and ended up seventh in MVP voting. Pretty good for someone who had just turned 23 when the season started!
He and the Pistons even showed noticeable growth as the season went on. Shortly before Christmas they were six games under .500, but finished on a 33-21 run and gave the Knicks nearly all they could handle in the first round of the playoffs despite being without Jaden Ivey and Isaiah Stewart. Cunningham scored 25 points per in that six-game series, with more than 8 assists and 8 rebounds. After an 11-point Game 1 loss, Detroit actually outscored New York in the final five games. This season hasn't started yet, but already they're being looked at as a dark horse to win the East.
Improvement doesn't follow a straight line, but you'd have to think that Cunningham will only continue to evolve. There are clear areas he can work on, such as cutting down on his turnovers and spotting up for more catch-and-shoot 3s, but there's already so much to like about his game that it feels unreasonable to quibble at this point. He's one of the best young players in the league, and proof that a little patience can go a long way.