The Pistons are 5-1 and showing real offensive growth from some of their young pieces, but Cade Cunningham’s turnover issue is still hanging over everything.
Through the early part of the season, Cunningham is averaging 4 turnovers per game, which puts him in the top 10 worst marks in the league for an individual player. That’s the same old headache for Detroit’s star, and it’s still there even with the new season underway.
There is some context here. Cunningham has been without his true second option for all but 5 quarters of the young season, with Jalen Duren’s injury forcing more of the offense onto Cade’s shoulders.
More touches naturally mean more chances to cough the ball up, and they also bring more defensive attention. But that doesn’t explain all of it.
A fair share of these mistakes are still coming from Cunningham himself.
Detroit wanted the added shooting around him to help ease that burden, and there was hope the offense would spread the creation duties around more this year. That hasn’t fully happened yet. The Pistons’ more balanced approach still hasn’t quite clicked, and Cunningham is still making the kinds of errors that hurt Detroit in last season’s playoffs.
A lot of the giveaways are not the product of elite defensive pressure. They’re coming when Cunningham puts himself in a bad spot or fires off a careless pass.
He already has a clip reel this season of driving into traffic and trying to make a late pass once defenders collapse on him. The fix is pretty clear: be more selective, recognize trouble sooner, and move the ball before the lane closes.
Friday night against the Nets was another example. Cunningham finished with 4 turnovers, and most of them were unforced.
It looked more like a lapse in focus than anything the defense created. Against a team like Brooklyn, that’s not ideal, even in a comfortable win.
Those kinds of games shape habits, and they can go in the wrong direction just as easily as the right one.
The Pistons should have more help available once the roster is healthier. In theory, that means more ball-handling support and better spacing around Cunningham. But even when most of the group was available in the first two games, he still had plenty of giveaways.
Detroit can also help by tweaking the offense. Getting Cunningham off the ball more and creating cleaner passing angles would go a long way.
Those adjustments matter now, and they matter even more when the games get bigger. Still, the biggest piece of the fix sits with Cunningham himself.
The Pistons can set the table, but he has to clean up the turnovers.
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Now, with the trade deadline approaching, league chatter has started to circle back to the same need: shooting. Michael Porter Jr. has emerged in the speculation as the kind of name that would fit the Pistons search for a proven perimeter threat, but for now it remains just that, a rumor-driven possibility tied to what Detroit still wants to fix before the market closes. [Read more 🡒]