The Detroit Pistons were bounced from the second round of the playoffs in seven games by the Cleveland Cavaliers
For Cade Cunningham and the Detroit Pistons, last night’s 125-94 game seven loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers put an impromptu pin in a season that the All-Star guard wasn’t ready to finish.
”That game sucked,” Cunningham said after the game. “Being back home, I definitely wanted to get this win in front of fans. It reminded me of last year and losing on the home court. It’s not a great feeling. I hadn’t been thinking about the offseason, so my mind’s been racing now trying to figure out what I’ve got to do, what it’s going to look like.”
From the onset of the 2025-26 campaign, Cunningham knew that he would be the engine of a Pistons squad that demanded high output and usage from their star player on a nightly basis. For 64 games in the regular season, Cunningham pushed Detroit each game during their 60-win stretch, which allowed for the Motown squad to secure the top seed in the East entering the postseason while battling through a collapsed lung along the way.
After finishing with the second-most assists per game (9.9) during the regular season, Cunningham shifted his focus to score more during the playoffs since Detroit’s complimentary pieces (outside of Tobias Harris in the first round) couldn’t muster the firepower to produce for the Pistons. So, Cunningham’s burden increased during seven-game battles with the Cavs and the Orlando Magic to a point that was untenable.
The All-Star point guard battled rampant turnover issues throughout the first two rounds, but that is tied to the reality that the Pistons lack a true secondary scorer when Jalen Duren is not firing on all cylinders. Duren’s productivity as a paint threat crumbled during the postseason, which made Cunningham’s job even more difficult. But instead of regressing into a heliocentric style of basketball, Cade worked to keep his teammates involved and ended up forcing a few too many errant passes in the process.
In his final game against the Cavs last night, Cunningham ultimately ran out of gas and out of ideas, finishing with 13 points, four rebounds and five assists spread across another heavy 37-minute workload. Even though the season clearly did not end the way Cunningham would have liked, the All-Star point guard offered a big picture take on what his team accomplished over the past year.
“We had a great year,” Cunningham said. “We grew a lot, grew from last year. That was the whole goal of the season was to grow and become a better team from last year and we did that. Obviously, disappointing series right here. We fell short of doing enough of the right things to win the series, but we were a number one seed for a reason. We won a lot of games this year. We played great basketball all year long, really established the identity that we didn’t have for a long time, so all those things are positives and things that we’ll take into the offseason and come back next year and grow from.”
The Pistons went further in the playoffs than before, winning their first series since 2008. That development alone shows growth, but Cunningham says that the Pistons organization has taken a number of steps forward from the top down.
”I’m grateful for the whole season, grateful for everybody that came out of this season healthy, nothing crazy,” Cunningham said. “But like you said, starting with the guys in the locker room, we had a lot of fun this year competing with each other. Practice, flights, games obliviously, we had a lot of fun. We bonded more than any other team. I’ve had in the NBA. A lot of that is a credit to the coach, the environment that he instilled. Trajan, the environment that they instilled in the building. Things that are business, but also we had fun together and enjoyed our time with each other. I can’t thank everybody enough for just creating that environment and allowing us to grow in the way we did with all the support that I’ve had and the whole team has had this season.”
Those are the words of a leader who is invested in driving his team forward by any means necessary. Cunningham and the Pistons are committed to raising the bar each year, and they plan to use this postseason setback to propel the squad to greater heights once the 2026-27 season arrives several months from now.
”It was a great opportunity this season to move forward and to continue to experience new things that we haven’t been exposed to,” Cunningham said. “We fell short, we were right there, but we fell short. I think that chip and that sting is going to sit for a while, and we’ve got to work through it and continue to grow.”
In the aftermath of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the Cavs will move on to face a rested New York Knicks squad to determine which team will represent the East in the NBA Finals.
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