{"id":820063,"date":"2026-08-25T07:03:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T07:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/820063\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T07:03:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T07:03:42","slug":"eastern-notes-cunningham-heat-issues-vucevic-cavs-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/820063\/","title":{"rendered":"Eastern Notes: Cunningham, Heat Issues, Vucevic, Cavs’ Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n By Dana Gauruder<\/a> |
\n at August 24, 2026 2:02 pm <\/p>\n

The Pistons finished last season as the top seed in the Eastern Conference and their franchise player, Cade Cunningham<\/a>, is taking extra steps aimed at keeping his club among the league\u2019s elite. Cunningham is leading a player-run mini-camp in San Diego this week, ESPN\u2019s Dave McMenamin tweets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Detroit didn\u2019t make a blockbuster deal this offseason, though it did add power forward John Collins<\/a> in a sign-and-trade and also acquired guard Isaiah Joe<\/a> from the Thunder. The standoff between the front office and restricted free agent center Jalen Duren<\/a> remains unresolved.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more from the Eastern Conference:<\/p>\n

The addition<\/a> of Klay Thompson<\/a> still doesn\u2019t resolve all the issues surrounding the Heat, Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel<\/a> writes. They could use another play-maker and shot creator, as well as another frontcourt contributor. Miami can fill its last two roster openings with players on veteran\u2019s minimum deals. They\u2019ll also have to figure out whether Thompson will come off the bench or replace Pelle Larsson<\/a>, who started 54 games last season, in the lineup. The perimeter rotation is also in flux.
\nNikola Vucevic<\/a>, who signed<\/a> with the Magic on a one-year deal this summer, believes the Celtics were hamstrung last season by the contracts of Jayson Tatum<\/a> and Jaylen Brown<\/a>, Sportando<\/a> relays. The veteran big man made his comments to SKWEEK. \u201cI think there were some signs, mostly because the big contracts and the NBA\u2019s new rules made it difficult for them to build the team,\u201d he said. \u201cWith Tatum and Brown both on such big contracts, it wasn\u2019t easy to fit the rest of the team around those two.\u201d Vucevic was still surprised Brown was dealt to Philadelphia after the season. The veteran center played 16 games with Boston on an expiring deal after being acquired from Chicago in February.
\nThe Cavaliers sent out $4.35MM to the Hornets and $3MM to the Wizards as part of the complex five-team trade<\/a> that brought restricted free agent Peyton Watson<\/a> to Cleveland, Bleacher Report\u2019s Eric Pincus tweets<\/a>. The former Nuggets wing reportedly received a four-year, $88MM deal from the Cavaliers that includes a fourth-year player option and a 7.5% trade kicker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dana Gauruder | at August 24, 2026 2:02 pm The Pistons finished last season as the top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,909,296,188,3860,78,77,6,3853,297],"class_list":["post-820063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-pistons","tag-basketball","tag-cade-cunningham","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-detroitpistons","tag-jaylen-brown","tag-jayson-tatum","tag-nba","tag-nikola-vucevic","tag-pistons"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117154873573584870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820063","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=820063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}