The Detroit Pistons’ season ended Sunday night after a 125-94 Game 7 defeat to the Cleveland Cavaliers at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. The result closed a 2026 playoff run that reached the Eastern Conference semifinals after the team finished as the top seed in the East.
Cade Cunningham pointed to the opening stretch as decisive but difficult to fully explain, saying, “Right out of the box. I mean, both teams came out to win the game. Just went their way. I don’t really have an answer outside of that.”
He also addressed the emotional impact of the loss at home, stating, “Yeah. No, that game sucked. You know, being back home definitely wanted to get this win in front of the fans. Reminded me of last year. You know, losing on the home court. It’s not a great feeling.”
On how the game unfolded, Cunningham added, “I mean, stunning, I felt like early on some of the plays just, you know, were bad bounces or miscommunications. Giving them points and stuff felt like it was something that we would be able to fix, and we just never got it together. So credit to them, they did everything they needed to do to win the game tonight, and we fell short of that.”
Looking at the broader season, the Pistons guard emphasized the progress made over the year despite the ending. “We had a great year. We grew a lot grew from last year. That was the whole goal of this season was to grow and become a better team than last year. And we did that obviously disappointing series right here. Fell short of, you know, doing enough of the right things to win the series. But we were the number one seed for a reason. We won a lot of games this year, played great basketball all year long.”
He also highlighted the team environment and development inside the locker room under head coach J.B. Bickerstaff and the organization. “Very grateful. You know, I’m grateful for the whole season. Grateful that everybody you know came out of the season healthy. Nothing crazy. But like you said, I mean starting with the guys in the locker room, we had a lot of fun this year. This year, you know, competing with each other, practice flights, games, obviously, you know, had a lot of fun. We bonded more than any other team that I’ve had in the NBA.”
Despite the early playoff exit, Cunningham pointed to motivation carrying forward into the offseason. “Yeah, a lot. I mean, it’s hard not to you know it was a great opportunity this season, you know to move forward and to continue to, you know, experience new things that we hadn’t been exposed to fell short. We were right there, but we fell short. So, you know, I think that that chip and that sting is going to sit for a while.”
