Detroit Pistons point guard Cade Cunningham received a major addition to his basketball resume on Sunday night
Midway through the 2025-26 campaign, Detroit Pistons point guard Cade Cunningham looked like a surefire bet to make his debut on the All-NBA First Team with a stellar start to the season that saw his team in first place of the Eastern Conference from November onward.
Challenging for the league lead in assists all season long, Cunningham was in the midst of a career year when the All-Star floor general suffered a collapsed lung against the Washington Wizards during the final month of the regular season. Given the untimely nature of Cunningham’s injury and the timeline associated with such a recovery, it looked unlikely that Detroit’s leader would return in time to meet the NBA’s 65-game requirement for individual awards.
Eventually, Cunningham made his return with three games left in the regular season but still fell short of that 65-game quote. Regardless, the league granted an appeal on Cunningham’s behalf that made the fifth-year guard eligible, so his late-season injury luck did not play a factor in his eventual destination on the All-NBA First Team, which was announced late last night. In the process, Cunningham became the first member of the Detroit Pistons to make the First Team squad since Grant Hill after the 1996-97 season.
Prior to this season, Cunningham was selected to the All-NBA Third Team for his work during the 2024-25 campaign, which was a year where Cade helped triple the Pistons’ regular season win total en route to their first playoff appearance in five years. But this year, Cunningham took his game to another level as opposing defenses became even more keen and aware of the playmaking talent in Detroit’s backcourt. Typically, that’s a blueprint which would lead to regression for a ball-dominant, sometimes heliocentric player of Cunningham’s ilk, but the added attention only served to open up space for Jalen Duren to operate in the paint and carve out his All-Star debut at the same time.
During the regular season, Cunningham finished a hair under 24 points per game with 9.9 assists each night to his credit while hitting three-pointers at a 34% clip with lower turnover margins and more active hands in the passing lanes on defense. In total, Cunningham left his imprint on all phases of Detroit Basketball last season, and he was the driving force behind the Pistons’ runaway freight trail in the regular season.
During the playoffs, however, Detroit ran into a bit of trouble from the jump against an Orlando Magic squad that performed better than their eight seed position would lead one to believe. Cunningham struggled with turnovers when guarded by Franz Wagner in the first round, and the Magic pushed Detroit to a fateful game seven. The Pistons ripped off two straight wins in elimination games just to make it to that game seven, but Cunningham made sure to seize the moment once he felt those bright lights with a huge 30-point effort to help Detroit advance to the second round.
At that point, Cunningham led the Pistons into battle against a familiar Cleveland Cavs group that split 2-2 with Detroit in the regular season. Eventually, Cunningham and the Pistons ran out of gas with a deflating 31-point loss in game seven against the Cavs, but it looks like Cleveland is about to be bounced from the postseason by the New York Knicks unless they can pull off a monumental comeback from their 3-0 deficit.
Look for Cunningham to return next year determined to take his team even deeper in the playoffs, and he just might ensure his position as a mainstay on the league’s All-NBA First Team along the way.
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