SI:AM | Cade Cunningham’s Huge Night Propels Pistons to Season Sweep of Knicks

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’ll be taking some time off once the Olympics are over, but Tyler Lauletta will have you covered on SI:AM all next week while I’m sleeping.

In today’s SI:AM:
🥇 Gold for U.S. women’s hockey
🥇 Gold for Alysa Liu
🥈 Silver for Jordan Stolz

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One-sided conference finals preview?

There should be little debate over which team is favored to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. The Pistons completed a season sweep of the Knicks on Thursday night with a 126–111 win at Madison Square Garden and improved to 41–13, neck-and-neck with the Thunder (42–14) for the best record in the league.

The key for the Pistons was, of course, Cade Cunningham. The star point guard erupted for 42 points (on 17-for-34 shooting) with 13 assists and eight rebounds. That makes him the first player in Pistons franchise history to have at least 40 points, 10 assists, five rebounds and five three-pointers in a single game. Cunningham also became just the third visiting player to have at least 40 points and 10 assists in a game at the current Madison Square Garden, joining Allen Iverson and LeBron James (who did it twice).

“He’s a winner, man. He really is. Attitude, leadership, every day, the guy is special," Pistons forward Tobias Harris said of Cunningham. “I think more than anything, he wants championships, and that’s a difference. There’s guys who want to win MVP and guys who want to win championships.”

It was an impressive win for the Pistons, who have now not only beaten the Knicks in all three of their meetings this season, but have also beaten them handily each time. The Pistons won 121–90 on Jan. 5 and 118–80 on Feb. 6, both in Detroit.

Injuries to Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton have greatly altered the Eastern Conference pecking order. At the start of the season, the Knicks and Cavaliers appeared to be the two teams best equipped to capitalize on down years from the Pacers and Celtics. New York was fresh off its first conference finals appearance in more than two decades (having beaten Boston and lost to Indiana), and while it was a risk to fire coach Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks still had perhaps the most talented roster in the East. Cleveland, meanwhile, was fresh off an incredible season in which it had won 64 games.

But then the Pistons emerged as the real favorite in the East. Detroit had made a massive leap forward last season, winning 30 more games than it had the year before, pushing its rebuild well ahead of schedule. The Pistons’ 44 wins last season were their most in nine years, and they’re already up to 41 wins this season. They lead the Celtics (who haven’t taken as big a step back as people predicted) by 5 ½ games for the best record in the East.

Cunningham has been the biggest reason for the Pistons’ success this season and is building a fringe case for MVP. He’s averaging 25.7 points per game, essentially on par with the 26.1 per game he averaged in his breakout last season. But it’s the Pistons’ defense that makes them truly elite. They have plenty of athletic, tenacious defenders like Jalen Duren, Ausar Thompson and Isaiah Stewart who hassle opposing players and render the team’s mild offensive shortcomings irrelevant. Detroit ranks second this season in defensive efficiency, only behind the Thunder, but just 11th in offensive efficiency.

“They’re the one team in the NBA right now that is really playing a totally different brand of basketball than everyone else,” Hall of Famer and Pistons legend Isiah Thomas told The Athletic. “They have gone back to what I would say the old Pistons DNA has been—defense, rebounding, shot blocking and taking good shots.

“It’s a formula that goes totally against the grain of the NBA, and it’s just like we did it in the 1980s and ’90s. When Cade sees Stewart and Duren open in the post, he actually throws them the ball. They try to score two points rather than always shooting 3s. The way I was taught the game, you want to put at least one point on the board every time down the court, and the Pistons play that way. That’s why the entire city of Detroit appreciates this team.”

It’s a formula the Pistons have followed throughout their history. Thomas’s “Bad Boy” Pistons were the most successful, winning back-to-back championships in 1989 and ’90, but it was also the approach Detroit took in the early 2000s when Ben Wallace, Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Rasheed Wallace won the franchise’s third title and reached six straight conference finals. No one expected the Pistons to return to relevance so quickly after they won 31 combined games in the 2022–23 and ’23–24 seasons, but having an offensive weapon like Cunningham surrounded by talented and relentless defenders has turned this team into the best in the East—and a serious Finals contender.

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The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:
5. Nikola Jokić’s bold attempt to earn three free throws by chucking the ball at the basket from halfcourt.
4. Victor Wembanyama’s dunk over two defenders.
3. Oriol Cardona Coll’s victory in ski mountaineering for Spain’s first Winter Olympic gold medal in 54 years.
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1. Every angle of Megan Keller’s preposterous gold medal-winning goal.