Cade Cunningham joins elite NBA group dominated by stamps and turnover

Ask how Cade Cunningham’s season is going for the Detroit Pistons and you might get wildly different answers.

Most fans would see a rising star making an All-Star jump with a better cast around him and having his team at an unexpected 5-7, which would put them in the play-in tournament, exactly the type of progress that we were. hope to see.

Others see a guy who is still too turnover prone and who collapses in the big moment.

There’s some truth to both, but whatever you want to pick apart in Cade’s game, it’s been overshadowed by a pleasantly surprising start for the team, where he’s averaged 23 points, 8.3 assists and 7.3 rebounds per match.

When it comes to turnovers, I’d be happy if he just cut out the bad ones, as some TOs are just part of doing business when you’re a high usage guy, ask Luka Doncic, who led the league in last season while leading his team to the NBA Finals.

Cunningham needs to be better with the ball, especially in clutch time, but he is a walking triple-double threat who is 6th in the NBA in assists per game. battle, so the good has far outweighed the bad.

That was true again last night, with Cunningham doing a good job of controlling the game, making good reads and passes to get his teammates good shots and only having a few turnovers until late when things got sloppy.

Part of it is on Cade, part of it is on the uncalled fouls hitting his arms, but the Pistons still walked away with a “W,” so I’ll take it.

Cade Cunningham also walked away from the game with a place in a unique group of players in NBA history.

With a bucket last night, Cade Cunningham became just the 6th player in NBA history to record 3,000 points, 900 assists and 150 steals in the first 150 games of their career.

Kudos to whoever comes up with these weird stat groups that are ultimately meaningless, but this one is interesting when you see who else is in the group with him.

The other five players are LeBron James, Luka Doncic, Allen Iverson, Grant Hill and Isiah Thomas.

That’s four former or current Pistons among guys who were prolific scorers who also set up teammates and got plenty of swipes in the early years of their careers.

They also happen to be guys who all turned the ball over quite a bit, which made me curious. Here is their total turnover in their first 150 games:

-Cade Cunningham: 544

-LeBron James: 512

-Luka Doncic: 586

-Allen Iverson: 560

– Grant Hill: 465

– Isiah Thomas: 554

Huh, so all these highly used current and future Hall of Famers also turned the ball over a lot when they first entered the league? Wild, that.