Cade Cunningham reacts to Detroit Pistons’ Game 6 loss to NY Knicks
“The immediate one is disappointment. … That feeling will stick with us this summer,” Cade Cunningham said after Game 6 vs New York Knicks, May 1, 2025 at Little Caesars Arena.
- Experts praised the team’s “Bad Boys” mentality and improved chemistry, highlighting Cade Cunningham and Ausar Thompson’s performances.
- Cunningham’s inconsistency in the playoffs, particularly compared to Jalen Brunson, was identified as a key area for improvement.
The Detroit Pistons have some time to think about their first-round playoff exit at the hands of the New York Knicks.
After resurrecting themselves from a franchise-worst 14-win season in 2023-24, the Pistons improved their win total by 30 and made the playoffs for the first time since 2019. They were betting underdogs as the No. 6 seed playing against the No. 3 seed Knicks, and those odds played out as they dropped the series, 4-2.
On one hand, the team’s regular-season success provides a baseline for the franchise to achieve greater success in the 2025-26 season. On the other hand, seeing how much the Pistons outplayed the Knicks only to fall late in Games 1, 4 and 6 demonstrated how much Cade Cunningham and the rest of the roster need to grow to reach a championship level.
At least that’s according to NBA experts, who have taken stock of Detroit’s season, analyzed what went wrong in the playoffs and prescribed what the Pistons need to do in the future.
Here’s a roundup of what these experts had to say following Detroit’s Game 6 loss:
Sam Quinn of CBS Sports wrote that the Pistons succeeded this season by embracing their old-school Bad Boys mentality:
“Nobody enjoyed playing the Pistons this year. Certainly not the New York Knicks, anyway, who just escaped their first-round rugby match in six games.”
After the game, Pistons owner Tom Gores praised the team’s performance and improved chemistry:
“This team has shown a lot. We’ve seen that there’s a good mix here. And the chemistry has been tremendous. I haven’t seen it (before) in my time here, I haven’t seen it in a lot of sports. These guys really like each other. It’s a combination of great men, unselfish men, that are really good at basketball.”
On ESPN’s May 2 episode of Get Up following the Game 6 loss, NBA analyst Brian Windhorst called Pistons forward Ausar Thompson “one of the great young defenders in the league” while former Duke star Jay Williams praised the roster the Pistons have already put together:
“They have the pieces of a championship team in the making.”
NBA experts on what went wrong for the Detroit Pistons
Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press puts much of the Pistons’ playoff shortcomings on Cunningham’s performance compared to Knicks’ star Jalen Brunson:
“Dispassionate basketball fans – the ones who don’t care about revitalized ticket sales or that Ben Wallace and Isiah Thomas were in the stands – will look at the box score and note that on the biggest night, the Knicks’ superstar, Brunson, went for 40 points with the killer 3-pointer, while the Pistons’ superstar, Cunningham, went for 23 points on 9-for-22 shooting, missed his last two shots, and didn’t hit a trey all night.”
Quinn put similar weight on Cunningham’s performance, which he said wasn’t the reason the Pistons loss, but still could have been better:
“His individual numbers were about what you’d expect out of a budding star in his first trip through the playoffs. The volume numbers were there. The efficiency numbers were not.”
Williams said that the Pistons can take another step forward if Cunningham unlocks a key part of his game:
“I think the next step for Cade Cunningham is having trust in that jump shot down the stretch.”
NBA experts on what’s next for the Detroit Pistons
The Athletic’s Hunter Patterson writes that the Pistons young core already has the makings of a winning group:
“Cunningham will enter next season at 24 and Ivey will be 23. The idea of inserting a healthy Ivey back into the lineup next to Cunningham could be promising. Factor in the growth of Thompson and Duren this season, and the starting lineup becomes even more intriguing.”
NBA analyst (and Pistons fan) Jalen Rose shared similar thoughts on TNT’s Inside The NBA, and also sees where they can add to the roster:
“Jaden Ivey was out, so you get that youth back, and his speed and his scoring ability to go with Ausar Thompson and Ron Holland II and Cade Cunningham, that’s a great young core. (They) still need a stretch-four, like a Lori Markenen type of player. I think just building what (they) have around Cade Cunningham and not making a knee-jerk move is going to be the course of action.”
Ultimately, though, Albom believes that the Pistons will grow by allowing the pain of their playoff loss to fester throughout the offseason:
“They have to hate the taste of it. They have to believe that fate got it wrong, it read the map sideways, that it was the Pistons, not the Knicks, who were supposed to move on.”
