Ranking the 5 worst Pistons starters of the Cade Cunningham era
The Detroit Pistons drafted Cade Cunningham first overall in 2021 hoping he would be the savior that would pull the franchise out of the trash heap.
It’s safe to say that hasn’t happened.
The Pistons have miraculously gotten worse since drafting Cunningham, culminating in last year’s shameful display of 14 wins, the worst in franchise history.
While some of this can be put on their star’s shoulders, the biggest problem is that Troy Weaver did nothing to help him, taking on busts and salary dumps for nothing rather than guys who could, you know, play basketball.
You only have to look at some of the players who were in the starting lineup with Cade Cunningham regularly to know the Pistons haven’t done nearly enough to build around their star.
Related Story. Grade the trade: Pistons land star in proposed 3-team trade. Grade the trade: Pistons land star in proposed 3-team trade. dark
Here are the worst starters of the Cade Cunningham era so far. For this exercise, I only chose players who played and started a fairly significant number of games, so you won’t be seeing the motley parade of g-leaguers and plumbers the Pistons have had in their starting five to finish the last four seasons.
Let’s move our way from best to worst.
#5: Troy Brown Jr.
This one is a bit unfair, as Brown Jr. didn't play much with the Pistons, though he did start over half the games he played for Detroit last season, a testament to just how bad things got.
Brown Jr. was playing around 20 minutes per game, so he got a chance to show what he can do and it was not impressive.
He shot just 29 percent from the floor, averaged just over four points per game and grabbed three rebounds.
It wasn’t just his 3-point shooting (28 percent) that was bad, he was also terrible from 2-point range, hitting just 31 percent from inside the arc.
A once-promising 3-and-D prospect that the Bulls traded away Daniel Gafford to get (nice move, Bulls!), Brown is now looking for a job.
He is in a long line of draft busts that Troy Weaver thought he could rehabilitate, and as usual, he was wrong. But I’m only putting Brown Jr. 5th because he didn’t play enough games to do real damage.
The rest of these guys did.