Pistons' Cade Cunningham may have just had the worst game of his young career

Cade Cunningham is going to be a great player in the NBA for years to come. 

There's a reason the Detroit Pistons selected him No. 1 overall in the 2021 NBA Draft. He's the type of point guard who can easily average near a triple-double when he's on his game.

The problem for both Detroit and Cunningham? Well, he's young, and so is the team around him.

Young players have growing pains, especially against good teams, and Cunningham and the Pistons ran into a whole buzzsaw full of growing pains when they took on the defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics at the Garden on Wednesday.

Detroit lost 128-112, which wasn't terribly surprising.

What was surprising, though, was Cunningham's stat line. The young point guard finished with just four points on 1-of-11 shooting from the field and 0-6 shooting from 3-point range. 

He snagged only three rebounds and dished out just two assists. He also turned the ball over twice and finished with a +/- of minus 17.

It was perhaps the worst game of Cunningham's career.

Here's the thing. The Pistons have an exciting rebuild ahead of them but they're still very early in the process. 

Cunningham is joined by 2022's No. 5 and No. 13 overall picks Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren, respectively, as cornerstones for Detroit's rebuild. 

Third-year player Saddiq Bey is a solid No. 3 option and newly extended sharp-shooter Bojan Bogdanovic is an excellent veteran presence for this team. 

And despite the terrible game, Cunningham still projects as a star player for Detroit. 

He came into Boston averaging 21.4 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 6.4 assists per game and is clearly having the best season of all the second-year players to date.

He put up 35/9/8 a few weeks ago against the Atlanta Hawks and had a stretch of four games that saw him average 27.7 points per game.

Cunningham is going to be great, if not really great. He, like many young players in their second year, is just hitting a bit of a slump. He's averaged just 13.5 points per game over his last four, including the stinker against Boston. 

It's not a reason to worry in Detroit, but it would also be foolish to completely ignore his terrible performance against Boston.