How the Detroit Pistons can stay alive without Cade Cunningham

Detroit Pistons: Lean into the defense

With Cade Cunningham out, the Detroit Pistons don’t have many great one-on-one offensive players.

This team is built around long, athletic defenders like Josh Jackson, Hamidou Diallo and Grant but none of them are great shooters.

Instead of trying to force more offense into the rotation with a heavy dose of Frank Jackson, I would lean into the better defenders on the team and try to win ugly until Cade gets back.

Josh Jackson didn’t have a great night offensively and made some dumb turnovers, but he would have given the Pistons a better chance against Zach LaVine than Frank Jackson did. Frank is the better offensive player of the two, but he is going to have a tough time against big shooting guards like LaVine.

I’m hoping coach Casey will just lean into what the Pistons do well, which is defend and not sacrifice that advantage for the slight chance at more points.

Overall I was happy with the effort against the Bulls and hopefully the next time these two teams play Cade Cunningham will be in the lineup and there will be a different result, but until he gets back the Pistons are going to have to play smarter on offense and rely on their defense to win games.