A viral stat has been circulating among Detroit Pistons fans, showing that Cade Cunningham has the second-lowest number of free throws attempted per game among NBA career 20+ PPG scorers.
Cade’s 4.1 free throws per game are only more than LaMelo Ball’s 3.7 per game. Cade is often heralded as a rare ethical hooper in today’s NBA who doesn’t go out of his way to seek foul calls, but the next step in his game may necessitate shooting more free throws.
Cade Cunningham has to be more of a bully
With some players, low free-throw rates are inherent to their playstyle. The aforementioned LaMelo Ball shoots almost half of his career field goal attempts from 3-point range, for example. It’s also not surprising to see that Stephen Curry, the greatest long-range shooter of all time, is towards the bottom of the free-throw attempts lists among top scorers. However, Cade Cunningham does not fit that category of player.
In fact, Cade was 7th in the entire NBA in field goal attempts per game from less than 10 feet. But he was down at 26th in the league when it came to free throw attempts per game, at 5.3. Many of the players who drive the ball as frequently are averaging at least seven free throws per game, a significant difference over the long haul of the season. For a shooter of Cade’s caliber, that’s an extra 1.6 points per game right there and elevates him to nearly 28 a game.
The problem isn’t with Cade’s drives but rather his finishes. He often goes for tough and crafty finishes, opting to use his finesse style of athleticism to go around defenders rather than through them. This may be due to his relative lack of athleticism compared to some other high-volume drivers such as Ja Morant or Zion Williamson but it also leads to less opportunity for contact and foul calls.
For what it’s worth, Cade has been working on steadily improving this aspect of his game, and that’s reflected in his free-throw numbers going up every season since his rookie year (when it was just 2.6 attempts per game). He has largely cut out rim finishes that relied entirely on getting a defender up in the air, which sometimes made for comedic sequences with a million pump fakes. As he grows physically and matures further, Cade should increase his physicality on his drives and rightfully earn more free throw attempts as a result.