The narratives around the Detroit Pistons and Cade Cunningham this offseason have proven one thing: You aren’t going to get any respect until you win.
After the Pistons won just 14 games last season and were the worst team in the NBA for the second straight year, Cunningham hasn’t been on too many radars when it comes to player rankings.
ESPN showed him no love in their recent rankings, where he was behind some absurd names (you can read about it here).
There were some national publications who named Cunningham as a possible breakout candidate, but even his teammate Jaden Ivey has gotten more buzz recently after a strong preseason.
The crew from Inside the NBA (Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith) were the most recent to weigh in with their rankings and once again Cade Cunningham was mostly missing from the conversation.
Top-50 NBA player rankings: Cade Cunningham
Bleacher Report put together an aggregate of the Inside the NBA crew’s top-50 here, but each guy submitted their rankings individually.
In the aggregate, Cunningham was not listed in the top-50 players in the NBA, which wasn’t surprising given the three men who were voting, as Shaq and Barkley are always going to put winning ahead of everything and Cunningham hasn’t won squat.
Only Kenny Smith had Cade in the top-50 (good on ya, Kenny!), listed at #46 sandwiched between Michael Porter Jr. and Darius Garland.
You can’t get too worked up about player rankings, especially when it comes to a guy whose teams have never won. Cunningham has put up All-Star caliber numbers, but until the Pistons win some games, no one is going to care and I get that.
Personally, there is no way I would rank guys like Tyler Herro and Paolo Banchero that much ahead of Cade (if at all) but they have been on winning teams and that matters.
LaMelo Ball is a bit of a head scratcher too, as he hasn’t won anything and has missed even more time than Cunningham with injuries.
Charles Barkley had OG Anunoby in his top 50 and Shaq had both Donte DiVincenzo and Jalen Green in his, oversights that I guarantee will be corrected if Cade Cunningham is healthy all season and the Pistons win more than 30 games, as Cade is better than all of those guys.
But all of this is conjecture until Cunningham proves himself on the court and leads his team to more than another lottery pick in the draft.