Detroit Pistons: 3 burning questions after a successful offseason
Another year of development for Cade Cunningham?
After an impressive rookie season, Cade Cunningham should return focused and ready to take the next step in his development. Expect him to become more efficient overall and become better at shot selection and choosing his spots.
Cunningham displayed rare maturity for a player his age as he always seems to always keep his cool under pressure. We did learn quite a bit about Cunningham last year. We learned that he has superstar potential and possesses the confidence to become a player who can take over games. What a lot of people don’t realize is just how much Cunningham’s basketball IQ makes him special.
Another attribute that makes him stand out is his ability to dictate the pace of play. You can see that he understands when to speed it up or slow it down. For example, Cunningham plays methodical whenever he plays point guard but whenever he plays off the ball, he is very aggressive and goes into attack mode.
Just an example of how much better Cunningham’s numbers could be is the fact that he still averaged 5.6 assists per game despite playing for a team who scored the third least amount of points, the second least amount of made field goals, the fifth least amount of made 3-pointers, second-to-last in field goal percentage and 3-point percentage.
When the other players begin to mature and gain experience Cunningham will be surrounded by shooters and players who know how to get open making his job a whole lot easier. Cunningham finished third in Rookie of the Year voting behind the Cavaliers Evan Mobley and the Raptors Scottie Barnes who won the award.
Not to say that Cunningham wasn’t deserving but both Mobley and Barnes ended up going to much better situations where they were surrounded by veterans and talent to complement their skill sets.
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After struggling for so many seasons the Pistons finally have their franchise player to build around and it’s going to be fun watching Cunningham take the Pistons to new heights.