The Cleveland Cavaliers stunningly blew out the Detroit Pistons 125-94 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals at Little Caesars Arena on Sunday. No one saw this top-seeded Pistons outfit losing by 31 points at home after winning Game 6 in Cleveland, and Cade Cunningham explained what went wrong in his postgame press conference.
“I felt like early on, some of the plays just were bad bounces or miscommunications, giving them points and stuff,” Cunningham said, via the Pistons. “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.”
The Pistons dug themselves into a hole they couldn’t get out of. The Cavaliers were up 31-22 at the end of the first quarter, but a mini 4-0 run by the hosts to start the second saw them cut the deficit to five. That was the closest they’d get, though.
The Cavaliers responded by going on a 10-0 run and never looked back. They were up 64-47 at halftime and would end up leading by as many as 35 points.
For some context on just how bad a loss this was for the Pistons, 31 points is the third-largest margin of defeat at home in a Game 7 in NBA history. They laid an egg at the worst possible time.
Interestingly, the Pistons’ largest margin of defeat in their dominant regular season was 21, also against the Cavaliers on Oct. 27, 2025. Cunningham, an MVP candidate this season, only had 12 points that night, and he wasn’t much better here.
Cunningham put up 13 points (5-16 FG), four rebounds, five assists, and two steals in Game 7. This was the 24-year-old’s lowest-scoring game in his short playoff career.
It’s hard to be too harsh on Cunningham, though. The two-time All-Star didn’t get a whole lot of help from his teammates during these playoffs. The Pistons were a one-man show on offense for long stretches, and it’s clear that significant changes are needed in the offseason. That seems like a wild statement to make about a team that went 60-22, but it’s true.
The Pistons do not have a reliable shot creator apart from Cunningham, which is a recipe for disaster in the playoffs. They need another quality playmaker next to him as well, along with more three-point shooters. You can mask these flaws in the regular season by being very good on defense and playing extremely hard. That’s not enough in the playoffs, though.
We saw the Pistons struggle mightily in the first round against the eighth-seeded Orlando Magic. The Magic found themselves up 3-1, and had Franz Wagner not gone down with a right calf strain, they probably would have won that series.
The Pistons caught a break there, but you knew it was only a matter of time before they were sent packing. If not here by the Cavaliers, then by the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Despite the season ending in this manner, Cunningham and Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff refused to call it a disappointing campaign. They do have every right to be proud of what they accomplished. The Pistons had gone 14-68 in 2023-24, and this turnaround has been nothing short of remarkable. For them to take another step, the front office has to make the right moves this summer.
As for Cunningham, losing in this manner has lit a fire under him. He was asked here how much this will fuel the Pistons next season.
“A lot,” Cunningham said. “I mean, it’s hard not to. It was a great opportunity this season to move forward and to continue to experience new things that we hadn’t been exposed to. Fell short. We were right there, but we fell short. So I think that that chip and that sting is going to sit for a while and gotta work through it and continue to grow.”
We have seen teams in the past struggle the following season after these kinds of defeats. The Pistons would be hoping to avoid that fate.
