Cade Cunningham is signing a five-year, $226 million max rookie extension to stay with the Detroit Pistons, in line with The Athletic’s Shams Charania and James Edwards. Cunningham was the No. 1 general decide within the 2020 NBA Draft, and regardless of lacking a lot of the 2022-23 season as a result of harm, he bounced again with a robust 2023-24 marketing campaign at the same time as his workforce floundered. He averaged 22.7 factors, 7.5 assists and 4.3 rebounds for the Pistons final season as they received 14 video games and completed with the NBA’s worst document.
Notably, the preliminary reporting right here was for the $226 million max determine. That’s clearly a big amount of cash, but it surely’s far decrease than the $270 million that Scottie Barnes, the No. 4 decide in that very same 2020 draft, reportedly signed for. The distinction would seemingly come within the type of Rose Rule escalators. The utmost quantity Cunningham or Barnes may have been assured was $226 million. Nonetheless, with these escalators, they might have earned a further $44 million by making an All-NBA Staff, profitable Defensive Participant of the 12 months or profitable MVP subsequent season. Barnes seemingly has these escalators in his contract. The reporting to this point means that Cunningham is not going to.
The Pistons are nonetheless in the midst of a rebuild that started earlier than Cunningham even arrived, and that rebuild was reset this offseason after they employed Trajan Langdon because the workforce’s new high basketball govt. He then fired head coach Monty Williams, which implies Cunningham will now have his third head coach in 4 seasons in Detroit. The Pistons employed former Cleveland Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff to fill that place on Sunday.
Now Detroit should determine how one can put a roster round Cunningham that is smart, as a result of to this point, the present group does not precisely match. The roster is full of younger gamers that wrestle to shoot 3-pointers, and so they simply added one other one in No. 5 general decide Ron Holland. Cunningham is an honest shooter, however it’s not his power. He’ll want extra spacing round him if he’s going to stay as much as this contract.
However Detroit’s first order of enterprise this offseason was making certain that its most gifted younger participant would stick round for the lengthy haul. They’ve executed so. Cunningham might be a Piston for the rest of the last decade, and now it’s as much as Detroit to determine how one can maximize his expertise shifting ahead.