The last time Cade Cunningham played basketball, he missed 10 of his 11 shots. He didn’t have much lift, or burst, or feel because his injured leg was slowing him down.
Before that game in Boston, he’d played in 11 other games, and looked like himself in only a couple of them. When he and the team decided to shut it down for the rest of the season so he could get surgery on his left tibia, the Detroit Pistons’ season ended, too.
The halt in the rebuild was a blow, no doubt. Yet news that he needed surgery helped explain why he looked so off to start the season.
You’d have to go back to last season to see the player the franchise is banking on. That’s a long time. Long enough to forget exactly what Cunningham showed as a rookie.
His absence for most of this winter made a tough year feel tougher: out of sight, out of mind and all that. Cunningham isn’t worried that folks may have forgotten about what he might become.
“I kinda released all that,” he said Monday, meeting with reporters at the Pistons’ practice facility. “I don’t care for that. I just want to play again.”
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If healthy, Cunningham remains a potential star, just as he showed on many nights as a rookie. He’s got much work to do, obviously, and will need to prove he can shoot consistently from deep to maximize the rest of his all-court gifts.
Part of his struggle from the 3-point line was the difference in distance between a college court and an NBA court. The few extra feet forced Cunningham to flatten his arc more to get it to the rim.
The flatter the shot, the less room for error because of the angle the ball arrives at the hoop. Imagine dropping a stone in bucket overhead versus trying to throw the stone in a bucket from ten feet away.
“My shot went flat when I first got out to the 3-point line,” he said. “I feel like now, my comfort level at my line has grown a lot and having all this time off has really helped that too. I’ve been able to build it up from the ground up. During the season, you don’t have the time to break it all the way down. Having all this time, I’ve tried to make the most of it and build a good foundation for my shot.”
Cunningham said his shot wasn’t broken. He just needed more lift, which meant more power, which is partly why he wanted to add strength to his frame and why he was willing to adjust his diet.
He looked noticeably sturdier when he sat in the media room at the Pistons Performance Center Monday. He was recently cleared to run and start taking jump shots and can’t wait to get in the lab without restrictions this summer.
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“We have a big summer ahead of us,” he said. “Because next year is the year we need to take the next step.”
He and Jaden Ivey are the keys to that push. The rookie guard played as well this season as Cunningham did last season. And while they have different strengths, they’ve both shown they can do lots of things as the primary ballhandler.
Next season, they’ll only be room for one when they’re both on the court. Teams whose best players take turns that way rarely mesh.
Ivey’s improvement as a shooter will help, as well as his ability to get to the rim. With Cunningham taking back over most of the point guard responsibilities, Ivey should find more room to attack and even more space to shoot.
Figuring out how it all flows and how they space off each other will be the most important challenge for the next coach. You could argue building a defensive identity is just as critical, and it is.
But Cunningham and Ivey have the talent to become a riveting and dynamic pairing, and because many of their skills overlap, it won’t be easy as naming roles and handing over the ball. It will take time.
Still, neither can wait.
“I like the way he’s grown throughout the season,” said Cunningham. “Him having the ball more, having more attention on him is really going to pay off … I knew he was going to have that but I didn’t realize he was going to pick it up so fast. That was huge for the team to see, that it was huge for him to feel that … with his work ethic, he’s going to be great.”
Said Ivey:
“To be able to be on the court with him … it’s the person. Starts with the spirit. He has that. He’s the key to getting every single person going in this locker room.”
Cunningham is the organizer, the connector, to borrow Troy Weaver’s description. The team’s general manager drafted Cunningham for that reason as much as any other.
He talks on defense. He directs on offense. He can get a shot when a set dissolves and the shot clock is winding down.
Ivey showed he can do some of that, too, especially the late shot-clock bucket-getting part, as he did last week against Miami, when he got to his spots and hit important fourth-quarter mid-range jumpers.
The rookie guard said his mid-range pullup gave him the most pride of the things he showed this season. He hadn’t shown that at Purdue, or even much during the first half of the season.
“Being able to utilize that aspect of my game, knowing when to use it at the right times has helped me and helped my teammates out a lot instead of forcing a layup every time,” he said.
In that way, Ivey’s growth was startling. It happened fast, almost exponentially toward the end of the season. Cunningham showed a similar arc of growth his rookie year as well.
Now, they’ll need to show it together, and show they are the future backcourt of a team that’s going places. As Cunningham noted, it’s time to take the next step.
“It (was) tough not being on the court,” he said, “tough watching my brothers compete and not being out there with them.”
As for Ivey?
“Still not sure what it’s exactly gonna look like,” he said.
But?
“I (know we’re) gonna make it work.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.