February 24, 2025 | Articles Homepage News The Pistons
Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores on Cade Cunningham’s 1st All-Star Game appearance: ‘He’s that guy’
DETROIT – The stars of TNT’s Inside the NBA program might as well have been speaking for the Detroit Pistons fan base.
Last month, when Kenny Smith announced Pistons star Cade Cunningham was named to this weekend’s NBA All-Star Game – a first for the No. 1 overall pick of the 2021 NBA Draft – Smith’s colleague Charles Barkley yelled: “Yes! Yes!”
Barkley added: “I’m so happy for that kid.”
The exchange wasn’t surprising since the crew of Smith, Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal had touted Cunningham’s candidacy for weeks on the popular program watched by many NBA fans each week.
Meanwhile, Cunningham was watching while eating dinner with teammates. Cunningham simply pumped his right fist and smiled while his teammates cheered and yelled congratulations when hearing the news.
Cunningham is the face of a remarkable turnaround. After last season’s dismal record, Pistons owner Tom Gores hired President of Basketball Operations Trajan Langdon to lead the franchise, and both men collaborated to hire J.B. Bickerstaff as head coach.
The Pistons (29-26) roll into the All-Star break having won 17-of-26 games since Dec. 21. After Wednesday night’s 128-110 victory over the Chicago Bulls, the Pistons are already 15 games clear of last season’s 14-win total with 27 games left. The Pistons stand sixth in the Eastern Conference, which if it stands, would guarantee the Pistons a playoff spot.
There are many factors supporting the turnaround, which has earned praise from national voices, but a main reason is Cunningham’s ascension. Cunningham has become a nighty triple-double threat, averaging 25.4 points, 6.3 rebounds and 9.4 assists per game with a 45.5% shooting percentage. According to the Pistons, Cunningham is the third fastest player to record 4,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,300 assists. The only players with such numbers in less games are Luka Doncic and Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson.
Cunningham, 23, is the first Pistons draft pick to make an NBA All-Star game since Andre Drummond in 2018 and the first Pistons player to appear in the NBA All-Star Game since Blake Griffin in 2019. Before that, Allen Iverson reached the All-Star Game in 2009 for the Pistons as his Hall of Fame career was winding down. During the era of title contention from 2000-2008, Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton, Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace all represented the Pistons in the annual showcase.
But despite the previous accomplishments of Pistons past, Cunningham’s place among the league’s best feels different. You have to go back to Grant Hill’s first six seasons in the 1990s to find a young, homegrown, dominant primary playmaker who represented the Pistons at the All-Star Game.
Gores summed it up succinctly when talking to reporters in December about Cunningham.
“Most people watching are just acknowledging Cade’s performance, but I’m not surprised at all,” Gores said. “He’s that guy.”
‘It’s a lot of responsibility’
Unlike the Pistons, Cunningham isn’t some kind of underdog story.
Seemingly since the moment he first donned a pair of sneakers, Cunningham was considered one of the top players in the country while growing up in the Dallas area. Ranked No. 2 in the 2020 recruiting class, Cunningham starred in his only season at Oklahoma State in establishing himself as the likely top pick of the 2021 NBA Draft. The Pistons, represented by franchise great Ben Wallace, won the NBA Draft Lottery. After some consideration of promising prospects Evan Mobley and Jalen Green, the Pistons ultimately used the top overall pick to select Cunningham.
But it is case of greatness delayed. Cunningham went through typical struggles with inefficiency and turnovers as a young point guard in his first season, although he still was named to the NBA’s All-Rookie First Team. His second season was cut short after 12 games when he had to undergo surgery to repair a stress fracture in his left tibia.
But no adversity could prepare Cunninham for the dismal 2023-24 season.
The Pistons tied a record for futility with a 28-game losing streak on the way to last season’s 14-68 finish, prompting Gores to pivot to Langdon and Bickerstaff. But Cunningham, who signed a five-year, max contract extension this past offseason, impressed with his maturity and leadership as the losses mounted.
“You don’t get that out of many old guys, right? Like, there’s not many people in this league that are willing to accept responsibility for the total right for the whole group,” Bickerstaff told Yahoo! Sports earlier this year. “You know, you deal with a lot of people now, the easiest thing to do is either shy away from it or put it on somebody else. And I think that speaks to his courage.”
Cunningham also told Yahoo! Sports: “(It’s) something that comes with being, you know, ‘the guy.’ Everybody calls me ‘the guy.’ It’s a lot of responsibility. It’s a lot of … I mean, people would call it pressure, but, you know, I have to deliver, and I haven’t done that to the level that I wanted to.”
Winning brings respect
Cunningham’s ascension also serves as a validation of the franchise’s direction.
After last season’s disaster, Langdon shrewdly added veteran talent (Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley and Tim Hardaway Jr.) to help complement Cunningham and the rest of the Pistons’ young core. Bickerstaff’s coaching has gotten the best out of youngsters Cunningham, Ausar Thompson, Jalen Duren and Jaden Ivey (before he went down with a broken leg).
Harris says he saw the potential before agreeing to a two-year deal to return to the Pistons.
“In the offseason, when I knew that there was an opportunity to come here, and looking at the group, looking at everything that I’ve learned up until this point of playing in terms of this is my 14th season, speaking to guys like Cade and seeing what Trajan’s building here, it just made sense to be back,” Harris said before the season. “It just made sense to be back here, to be somewhere that was special to me as a player and to help this group really change the course of the identity of what people may think we’re about right now.”
So far, so good. When the season resumes next week, the Pistons will be in the thick of a playoff chase. And while Cunningham will bask in the cheers from the fans at the Chase Center in downtown San Francisco, he understands that team success leads to such accolades.
“I think (winning is) the main thing,” Cunningham said. “I feel like we all feel the excitement and the accomplishment of me being an All-Star. I couldn’t have did it by myself. They’ve encouraged me, they’ve pushed me, they’ve held me accountable the whole year. The coaching staff is putting me in the right positions, pushing all of us to be the best that we can be.
“It is a testament to the group. It’s a testament to the culture that Coach Bickerstaff is trying to put in place. And I’m just excited that we got this done and now we can continue to knock off things that we got on our checklist.”