Given the unique nature of the injury, there was a chance it could have had a major impact on the Knicks \u2014 both in their chances to catch the Pistons for the No. 1 seed in the East, and if he was out longer, a potentially weakened Pistons team in the postseason.<\/p>\n
![\"Returning](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Cade-Cunningham.jpg\")
Returning star guard Cade Cunningham drives on Milwaukee\u2019s Gary Trent Jr. during the Piston-Bucks game on April 8, 2026 in Detroit. AP<\/p>\n
But Detroit went 8-3 without him, refusing to open the door to the Knicks in the standings and clinching the No. 1 seed in the process. <\/p>\n
And Cunningham will have three games to get himself back into rhythm ahead of the postseason. If the Knicks finish as the No. 3 seed, he\u2019d have two playoff rounds, too, before the possibility of an Eastern Conference finals showdown between the two teams.<\/p>\n
The Pistons bludgeoned the Knicks in all three regular-season matchups this year and Cunningham was in the middle of it. <\/p>\n
He averaged 29.8 points, 11.0 assists and 5.3 rebounds across the three games on 51.6 percent shooting from the field and 50 percent shooting from 3-point range.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Knicks need just one win across their final three regular-season games to surpass last year\u2019s tally of 51.<\/p>\n
Coach Mike Brown claimed ignorance.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn my grandson, I didn\u2019t know how many wins the Knicks had last year,\u201d Brown said after practice Wednesday. \u201cI might\u2019ve seen it or whatever, I know they finished in second or third last year, one of the two. But I don\u2019t know how many wins they had, so it didn\u2019t matter to me, I just wanted to try to get the best seeding we could going into the playoffs. But even more important than that, I wanted to feel like we\u2019re playing a certain way going into the playoffs and that we had a really good feel and direction while having true belief in what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Jaylen Brown (left Achilles tendinitis), Derrick White (right knee contusion), Sam Hauser (lower back spasm) and Neemias Queta (right toe sprain) are all questionable for the Celtics. <\/p>\n
It is the first leg of a back-to-back for them.<\/p>\n
Just Tyler Kolek (right oblique strain) is listed on the Knicks injury report. He is questionable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest Knicks killer this year is back. Cade Cunningham, after missing 11 games due to a collapsed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,909,188,102,121,3871,6,191,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-706315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-cade-cunningham","11":"tag-detroit-pistons","12":"tag-milwaukee","13":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","14":"tag-milwaukeebucks","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-new-york-knicks","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116372555473433081","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}