Is Cade Cunningham officially a bust?

[RonG]

nvm

 

[guitarguy]

Yeah watching him the other night, he's certainly not terrible, but it doesn't seem like he's ever likely to even be an All-star at this point. That team is bad though, he doesn't seem good enough to help them win at all though.

Now, Green....super bust, right?

 

[stick]

He's slow as hell with the ball. His length isn't all that. He's not the 6'7"/6'8" he was billed as in the high school/college days and he looks smaller on the court than his listed height. Can be an okay shooter, has good form. Bad with a capital B volume scorer and number one option, one of the worst (if not the worst) in the NBA who has that distinction on their team. He makes bad passes consistently since his college year, it hasn't changed. For someone who runs point and initiates as frequently as him, that makes winning games tough. He is capable of stabilizing the half-court offense for Detroit. He has some craftiness and headiness to his game. Poor defender, but don't watch him enough to say he's a poor team defender. Mediocre rebounder. Three years in a row he's been a bad volume three point shooter, not a good look for a skill of his that is supposedly a swing skill.

Yeah, I just don't know with Cade. He's an okay player, however I don't see an avenue where he's a number one option on a team that makes a playoff push (to be fair to him, he has to be that for his team at the moment based on their roster). That kinda hurts Detroit. If he were in the playoffs and teams were focused on stopping him ..? My goodness, I think his weaknesses would be even more visible than they are now. If Cunningham was the secondary creator, that would improve his game imo. Pistons haven't had a good enough table-setter point guard for that happen at this point and I dunno if that idea has begun to sprout in the locker room/behind the scenes to make that adjustment feasible to begin with.

With this said... Pistons could still turn things around and make a run for a play-in game this year. They have the pieces in place to make it happen and have battled a fair amount of injury thus far.

 

[Soar]

A bust is a guy like Anthony Bennett or Kwame Brown.

Cade isn’t a bust.

That said, Cade always felt more like a guy who would be your second or third option and not the franchise player he was considered to be coming out.

The Pistons as a whole are just insanely young. Their oldest starter right now is literally 22.

Their vets like Alex Burks and Joe Harris have missed a ton of games and their best vet Bogdanovic has literally missed the whole season.

I think they will improve as the year goes on.

 

[Prime 1978]

I thought they were making a huge mistake by drafting him once his measurements showed him only being 6’4. What made him special was his guard skillset with being legit wing size.
His skillset at that size makes him a late lottery pick type of talent.

 

[adam81king]

I don't think anyone can call Cade a bust unless they're ready to call Evan one, too.

 

[Douglar]

Yeah watching him the other night, he's certainly not terrible, but it doesn't seem like he's ever likely to even be an All-star at this point. That team is bad though, he doesn't seem good enough to help them win at all though.

Now, Green....super bust, right?

Going into that draft, I expected the Cavs to draft either Jalen Green or Suggs. What a relief. Both of them have been a step down from Cunningham by just about any measure, so in that respect, Cade is not at the bottom of the trash heap. He’s a little higher than that. But unlike Mobley or Barnes who could help most teams in the league right off the bat, it looks like Cunningham can’t help a team win unless they got the right fit around him.