Why Cade Cunningham Says Three Straight Turnovers Late vs. Cavaliers Weren’t ‘Careless’

The Pistons’ streak of five-straight playoff wins ended Saturday with a tough 116–109 loss to the Cavaliers in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. Cleveland has yet to drop a game at home over the postseason, but Detroit had the Cavs on the ropes in the fourth quarter.

Cleveland held a 17-point lead at one point, but All-Star guard Cade Cunningham and the Pistons stormed back and had the ball in a tied game with just 2:34 left. That’s when the game flipped as Cunningham coughed up the ball on three straight possessions that turned into a couple of big buckets for Cleveland.

Cunningham then brought the Pistons back with a clutch dunk and a three-pointer, but James Harden was able to ice the game for the Cavs with a three of his own from there. Detroit’s superstar had himself a game with a 27-point triple-double, but he also had eight turnovers and the three that came late proved costly.

3 turnovers in 40 seconds for Cade Cunningham. pic.twitter.com/FzclG7fkEP
— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔢𝔱𝔯𝔬𝔦𝔱 𝔗𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 📰 (@the_det_times) May 9, 2026

The Cavs’ defense was all over Cunningham, which would be the plan of any other opponent of the Pistons, but some of the mistakes could have been avoided. Cunningham is the straw that stirs the drink for Detroit’s offense and is about as heliocentric a player as any across the NBA, so some turnovers are a given. You just have to hope the turnovers aren’t of the careless variety and the 24-year-old star said postgame the mistakes were anything but.

“We did our job getting back into the game,” he said after the loss via Omari Sankofa II of the Detroit Free Press. “Fourth quarter, turnovers, they had a couple of opportunities out in transition. A couple bad ones where where we don’t get the ball on rim, inbounding the ball, little things.

“Just careless turnovers, I wouldn’t even say careless, I care about it a lot. Just bad plays that could’ve got shots on the rim and could’ve given us an opportunity to win the game.”

Cade: “We did our job getting back into the game. Fourth quarter, turnovers, they had a couple of opportunities out in transition. A couple bad ones … just careless turnovers. I wouldn’t even say careless, I care about it a lot. But just bad plays.” pic.twitter.com/yNtSedU674
— Omari Sankofa II (@omarisankofa) May 9, 2026

Cunningham already has 58 turnovers through 10 games in the postseason, which leads all players on a per-game basis. Turnovers have been a talking point through his five NBA seasons, and though he has improved, the issue bit the Pistons Saturday as they failed to take a commanding 3–0 lead on the Cavs.

Does Cade Cunningham have a turnover problem?

Through all the brilliance, turnovers have been a bugaboo in Cunningham’s game. He averaged a career-high 4.4 turnovers per game last season, which was his first All-Star campaign, and brought that number down to 3.7 this season as Detroit won 60 games and earned the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.

A high number of turnovers isn’t a surprise for a player like Cunningham who has the ball in his hands more often than not and is the target of every other team’s game plan (Luka Dončić has averaged 4.0 turnovers per game over his career, for example). As time goes on, though, you want to limit that number as much as possible. Cunningham turned the ball over less compared to last season and during this Pistons’ campaign, he mostly got better as the year went on.

He coughed the ball up at least four times a night in October and November, then finished below that threshold for each month over the rest of the regular season. He still finished near the top of the NBA in turnovers per game, tied with Nikola Jokić and behind only Dončić and Deni Avdija, but Cunningham improved in taking care of the ball this season.

The playoffs have been a different story, however, as Cunningham averaged 5.3 turnovers per game in Detroit’s first-round series against the Knicks last year, which lasted six games. This year, he’s turned the ball over at an even higher rate. The drastic variance between the regular season and playoffs isn’t necessarily a surprise as defense tightens during the postseason, but limiting the turnovers would go a long way as Cunningham hopes to lead the Pistons to their first trip to the Eastern Conference finals since 2008.

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