Follow us on Google Discover The Detroit Pistons are built around Cade Cunningham, but their latest move has just left their star player feeling weird and isolated.
Cade Cunningham has started living up to his draft status after a slow start in the NBA, going from strength to strength each season and dragging the Detroit Pistons with him.
He finished fifth in the MVP rankings last season and was in the All-NBA First Team for the first time in his career. The Pistons rode this elite form to 60 wins in the regular season, the most since 2005/06, before falling in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
Clearly, Cunningham runs the team, so they could ill-afford to alienate him with any decisions. That is exactly what they seem to have done.
Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesCade Cunningham hurt at Isaiah Stewart trade
Cunningham ran the Pistons, but he was helped by role players like Isaiah Stewart, who was the lynchpin of their bench when the starters sat.
He kept developing his 3PT shot to space the floor, and his switchability onto more nimble players and rim protection made him a complete threat on both ends of the floor.
Pistons, however, wanted financial flexibility to extend Jalen Duren, so they cleared up nearly $30m in future salary by trading Stewart to the Memphis Grizzlies.
The Duren extension talks are getting messy, and Cunningham has also made no effort to hide how he really feels about the Pistons’ decision to trade away Stewart.
He said [via Detroit Free Press]: “That’s [Isaiah Stewart] somebody that I planned on playing my whole career with. For him to not be around, it is weird. It feels like I’m a rookie again, like I’m stepping into something new because I don’t have him with me.”
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The Pistons will still be fine, because Cunningham’s ceiling is limitless, but this trade, combined with the mess that Duren’s extension talks are becoming, shows that all is not well behind the scenes with the Pistons.
These are the kind of decisions the franchise has not had to make in a while because there was no success to speak of, but the dynamics have changed now. They will have to learn the art of building a contender and then managing the stars within that structure.
It’s not off to a good start.
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