Heading into the 2024-25 NBA season, no team was slated for fewer nationally televised contests than the Pistons, meaning that most of Detroit’s remarkable transformation from the NBA’s worst team into a bona fide playoff squad has unfolded under cover of comparative darkness. So when the powers that be decided to shuffle the deck and flex Detroit’s Wednesday meeting with the Miami Heat up to ESPN’s prime-time slate, it gave All-Star guard Cade Cunningham and his crew an opportunity to make an impression on an audience that might not have been familiar with their work.
Cunningham didn’t waste it:
After a pair of Tyler Herro free throws knotted the contest at 103 with five seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, the Pistons — who had trailed by as many as 12 in the first half — had one shot to leave South Beach with a victory. Heat center Bam Adebayo tracked Cunningham all the way from the baseline to the sideline on the inbounds, sticking with Detroit’s star lead guard every step of the way. Despite the All-Defensive big man’s hand directly in his face, Cunningham calmly rose, fired and banked in a 24-footer with 0.6 seconds to go, stunning the crowd at Kaseya Center and giving the Pistons a thrilling 116-113 road win.
“We trust Cade to go out and create the shot he’s most comfortable with,” Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff told reporters after the game. “We know he’s going to get a shot. Tonight he got the bank and the kiss to get it in.”
Cunningham had struggled with his shot early, missing six of his eight attempts in the first quarter, but finished with 25 points on 11-for-25 shooting to go with 12 rebounds, 11 assists, two blocks and a steal in 36 minutes — his ninth triple-double of the season. That ties Domantas Sabonis for third most in the NBA this season, behind only Nikola Jokić and LeBron James, and draws Cunningham within one of joining Grant Hill as the only players in Pistons history to post 10 triple-doubles in a single season.
The rattled-in bank shot capped a stellar close by the Pistons, who trailed by eight with nine minutes to go and held Miami to just one field goal and two Herro free throws in the final 4:27 of the fourth quarter. That offensive drought — par for the course for a Miami side that ranks dead last in the NBA in offensive efficiency in “clutch” situations (when the score’s within five points in the final five minutes) — allowed Cunningham and Co. to stay close enough to snatch away the victory and hand the Heat their ninth straight defeat, marking the longest losing streak of Erik Spoelstra’s coaching career.
“There’s no way to explain some of this, the bank shot at the end,” said Spoelstra, whose Heat have now blown a league-high 19 double-digit leads this season. “There’s no way to explain that. You just have to find more resolve. We’re all getting tested in so many different ways that we do not want to get tested.”
Adebayo (30 points, nine rebounds, eight assists) and Herro (29 points, four rebounds, three assists) led the way for the Heat, who fell to 29-40 on the season and just 4-16 since trading Jimmy Butler, clinging to 10th place in the East. Cunningham’s Pistons, on the other hand, continue their stunning ascent in the conference’s pecking order. Detroit has now won four of six and 14 of 19, improving to 39-31 — one game back of the fourth-place Indiana Pacers, in a virtual tie with the Milwaukee Bucks for fifth place in the East.
Milwaukee took the first two meetings against Detroit this season, but the teams will square off next month in the final two games of the regular season — a pair of contests with the potential to add even more intrigue to a season that’s already been full of dramatic twists and turns for the Pistons, with the latest one coming in South Beach off the fingertips of their rising superstar point guard.
“To have put ourselves in the position we put ourselves is something not many people saw us doing,” said Cunningham, who led six Pistons in double figures in the win. “It’s something we’re super proud of. We also know there’s a lot of work ahead to get the respect we want in this league … I don’t feel like we’ve accomplished anything yet.”
