Cade Cunningham’s Injury Shifts the Balance of Power in East With Playoffs on the Horizon

The news of Cade Cunningham’s collapsed lung slammed the NBA world like a runaway train on Thursday morning.

It was a shocking development and a brutal turn of events for a young basketball star in the midst of his best season yet. Cunningham has made a solid MVP case for himself with a nightly statline of 24.5 points, 9.9 assists and 5.6 rebounds while leading the Pistons to their best regular season since Ben Wallace manned the middle in Detroit. An extremely successful season has suddenly been put on hold, and the team’s primary focus is now ensuring Cunningham gets through a scary situation as smoothly as possible.

Beyond that human aspect, however, it’s undeniable this development shifts the balance of power in the Eastern Conference with the playoffs right around the corner.

Pistons will struggle without Cunningham

The Pistons have been the best team in the East from the first game of the season. Cunningham was an elite conductor on offense, a huge ballhandler with great vision; his pick-and-rolls with Jalen Duren are the bread and butter of this Detroit unit. The team’s calling card comes on defense, though, where coach J.B. Bickerstaff has the whole roster fully bought into a gritty identity where allowing the opponent to score is an affront. Cunningham is a big part of that too as a big, switchable guard capable of taking on point-of-attack duties when needed. All that resulted in Detroit’s chokehold on the No. 1 seed in the conference for pretty much the entire season; the Pistons even hit the rare championship milestone of winning 40 games before recording 20 losses.

But while they’ve played some dominant basketball the flaws in this team have slowly revealed themselves over the course of the season. Those flaws have been most notable on offense, where Detroit’s cadre of elite athletes in the rotation (who are all crucial defensively) collectively own different shortcomings.

Cunningham is the only player on the roster who can reliably create a shot every time down the floor. Duren is second on the team in scoring with 19 points per game and earned his first All-Star selection this year thanks to a big leap in production across the board but his points largely come from actions with Cunningham. And after those two, the Pistons have nobody to rely on. Duncan Robinson is a spot-up shooter, Tobias Harris is who he is at this stage, Daniss Jenkins has cooled off considerably, Ausar Thompson is still miles away from being a plus player on offense... the list goes on and few answers can be found.

Cunningham is the straw that stirs the drink for the Detroit offense. Per PBP Stats, the Pistons have managed an offensive rating of 111.2 per 100 possessions in over 1,000 minutes without Cunningham on the floor this season. That number would rank above the Kings’ offense and below the Bulls’ unit over the course of a full season. With Cunningham, however, the team’s 121.9 offensive rating per 100 possessions would rank the best in the league. In other words, the Pistons score like one of the best teams in the NBA with Cunningham and bottom out to tanking levels of offense when he’s out. The gigantic gap between those numbers reflect the wonkiness of advanced stats, in fairness, but it certainly paints an accurate picture of how inept Detroit can be without its leading man.

Fortunately for the Pistons the defense is so good across the board that the numbers don’t change much with or without Cunningham; they boast one of the league’s elite defenses no matter who is on the court. It doesn’t leave the team entirely toothless. That’s why they own a 5–2 record in seven games without Cunningham this season despite the dire drop in efficiency stats. But not a single one of those five wins came against a team projected to be in the mix for the playoffs.

Cunningham’s injury opens the door for other East contenders

For all those reasons and the intangible emotional impact of losing the team leader, the Pistons’ chances to win the East have taken a blow. They own a 3 1/2 game lead over the Celtics for the No. 1 seed and own a tiebreaker there, which makes for a pretty good cushion. As long as Detroit doesn’t go on a massive losing streak it should enter the postseason as the top seed in the conference. But the team’s ability to win games once there is now seriously in question.

After news of the injury broke the Pistons announced Cunningham would be reevaluated in two weeks, on April 2. That’s just about two weeks from the start of the postseason. As of now there’s no certainty whether he’ll return to play after that evaluation or how long it will take him to get back to full strength. Given his importance to the Pistons’ offense anything less than a version of Cunningham playing at 100% makes Detroit easier to beat. Potentially much easier. Defense wins championships is a popular saying for a reason but in today’s NBA no team can win a title without a top-tier scorer leading the way in some capacity.

The team’s physical defense should translate well to postseason play and most of the roster got some seasoning with last year’s heavyweight fight against the Knicks. What’s more, even if they somehow fumble the No. 1 seed, they’ll wind up with the No. 2 seed at worst and will still take on a play-in team in the first round—even without Cunningham the Pistons should still have a talent advantage over whatever opponent they might draw to kick off the postseason.

But after that is when the concern really grows. If Cunningham isn’t playing or isn’t fully in form, the trio of the Cavaliers, Celtics and Knicks become even more dangerous opponents. They’re all flawed in their own right but boast better talent if Detroit doesn’t have Cunningham. That sudden change in the level of the playing field makes the East a true toss-up as far as who will be last standing.

The Pistons were never really runaway favorites to win the conference. But they definitely earned the benefit of the doubt with nearly a full season’s worth of strong performances. Now the roster is without its best player and the only scorer capable of elevating the whole offense to playoff-caliber levels.

There’s a power vacuum in the East now. Who will step up to seize it with a month to go before the playoffs?

More NBA from Sports Illustrated

Listen to SI’s NBA podcast, Open Floor, below or on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s YouTube channel.