Pistons star Cade Cunningham starting to get national recognition

It's been a long time coming for Detroit Pistons star Cade Cunningham, but to be fair, he's had a long and rocky road to climb.

Cunningham was selected by the Pistons with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft and averaged a respectable 17.4 points, 5.6 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game on a below-average Detroit team. He wasn't the NBA's Rookie of the Year — that award went to Scottie Barnes, who went No. 4 overall to the Toronto Raptors — but it was clear that Detroit had a future star on its hands.

Cunningham's sophomore season lasted only 12 games before a shin injury sent him to the bench and, ultimately, season-ending surgery.

There was hope for a Cunningham resurgence in his third year, but he toiled away in obscurity on a historically bad Pistons team that went 14-68. Cunningham averaged 22.7 points, 7.5 assists and 4.3 rebounds per game on that putrid team.

Until now, Cunningham has never been able to become Cunning-him because he's had to shoulder the load for a historic franchise that has been deep in the basement of the NBA since its last championship run in 2004. That's not to say the 2024 Pistons are great under new head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, but it's worth noting that at 12-17, they're two games away from tying their win total from all of last season, and they still have over 50 games left to play. 

It's also worth noting that Cunningham is playing at an All-Star clip, and the league as a whole is starting to take notice. He's averaging 24 points, 7.1 rebounds and 9.7 assists per game this season, and he was just named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week for Week 9 of the NBA season for an incredible stretch of work in his last three games: