Cade Cunningham is averaging the most potential assists per game in playoffs but is averaging less assists than the 6 players below him
Has he tried passing to people who will actually hit the shot? Is he stupid or what?
He has tried passing to Magic players a lot, but their shots don’t go in either. Kinda tragic
stoppable force meets moveable object
Fuck you, take your upvote
Is there a lore reason why his teammates don’t make buckets after he passes to them?
because the Pistons don’t matter on judgement day
This series is payback for what we did to Ivey. Probably, forever cursed.
“lore reason”?
Yes. Like how there is a lore reason for Ranni to carry out the assassination of Godwyn in Elden Ring.
It’s a meme.
BAM A CUNNINGHAM YUM
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He was signed offseason before last
That still counts as “…the offseason…,” I’d say.
Certainly it does but we both know that’s not what you meant.
Pistons are taking 14.2 3PA that are considered wide open (6+ feet to the nearest defender).
They are shooting 26.8% on those attempts :|
Is the man [REDACTED]?
That would be a turnover
Yes actually. He’s been passing it to the Magic for fastbreak layups all series. Apparently those don’t count for assists though.
He’s not blessing the ball before he passes it, bad juju
Lol 10 for Cade is brutal
Impressive, but I have to imagine a big part of that is Orlando being fine with their questionable shooters getting decent looks.
“Questionable shooters”, aka, the entire team.
well except maybe Duncan Robinson
I can’t believe the big trade deadline move was Kevin Huerter. It honestly blew my mind when I realized he only shoots around 30% from 3 nowadays
Are there are any unquestionable ones?
Duncan 41% from 3 in the regular season and 39% so far (small sample size ofc) in the postseason. That’s a good shooter. He’s just been bad at a lot of other stuff
TLDR: no one on the Pistons can shoot
Tell a friend of a friend that Tobias is an assassin… of his team’s playoff hopes.
Yeah, we’re not playing good. Not a big surprise that the number of shots made are low compared to number of passes he makes leading to a shot attempt .
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Type of comments you make when you send too much time on Reddit
I’m just a redditor who wanted to write something other than “yeah, we ass, what did you expect”. Don’t know why they got agitated.
Why be a dick when you can just keep it pushing
Just for the contrast, you should also include Embiid, who’s also averaging 7 APG, but is doing it on just 8 potential assists!
People honestly underrate Embiid’s improvment as a passer as part of his offensive development
Goddamn those Pistons are absolutely bricklaying. Surprised so many of Jokic’s potential assists are actually turning into assists with how we’ve been shooting in a lot of these games.
I miss THJ.
If it makes you feel any better, he hasn’t been a good shooter in our playoff series either :( my man is overdue for a nice shooting performance, hope he brings it tonight
Doesn’t make me feel better. I will root for every player from last year’s roster. THJ was a big factor in winning two games in NY. It was fucking awesome.
Fair. Give him your energy and I’ll try and sneak Rocky onto your team for game 6. Maybe he can make some half court shots for you!
I know this is going to sound crazy, but Ausar is money from half court. Don’t understand why, but he is.
Well it can’t hurt the offense more at this point if he pulls up and shoots like 30% from there for no reason instead of being forced into shitty middies as the shot clock winds down.
Potential man
He’s an all nba player who’s averaging 32 points in the playoffs
Lukas averaging 0 in these playoffs too
Justin Herbert is Cade Cunningham father
Cade “Megumi Fushiguro” Cunningham
Better than Luka apparently
No one thinks he’s better than Luka
There was definitely talks when Luka had a bad stretch. Maybe it was astroturfed, not sure.
Thinking someone has had a better year doesn’t mean you think they’re a better player
No, the narrative was Cade was a better player.
It very much wasn’t
He’s also averaging like 10 turnovers a game. I’m guessing thats his teammates too
I haven’t watched the pistons, but you do expect a star to have more turnovers on a worse team.
Worse team => star contends with more double teams, has to make riskier passes, just generally carries more responsibility etc… => star ends up with higher volume and lower efficiency.
Not only team quality but not having another reliable ball handling outlet reduces turnovers, especially as a tall ball handler. I think if JB had more imagination maybe he’d lean into Ausar’s point forward skills but he doesn’t seem to trust Ausar as much as he could
Have you watched Ausar try to be the primary distributor? Who do you think will have better statistics regarding assists and turnovers per possession, him or Cade?
Where did I that he should be a primary distributor? I’m saying that they should use his ball handling as an outlet for Cade or to help take some pressure off to get into sets. If you’re the only guy bringing it up all the time it is exhausting and that exhaustion contributes to increased turnovers. I’m not expecting the dude to be running point and I know he’s not as good as his brother at it but they have someone with enough skill at it that it can help ease some of the pressure at least bringing it up
He brings the ball up the court all the time that has nothing to do with the turnovers they’re experiencing against Orlando.
Exactly
that’s the explanation for 5 turnovers per game, not 7. It’s a little bit of both here. Cades gotta be tighter with the ball
They had 60 wins and they’re playing an 8 seed
JB Bickerstaff is about to win COTY lmao
This was true as of Game 4 but the broadcast team said Cade had a 100% help rate on his drives - the magic only respect him, Duncan, and duren on rolls on their scoring gravity
You watch Ausar bring the ball up and dribble in place at the 3 enough and it gets to you
And I trust him the most outside of Cade with the ball. Robinson is neutralized once you pressure him off the 3, Tobias is going to go 5⁄15 most of the time, and Duren is Ausar without the defense or ball handling
Ausar dribbled straight into 3 players in the paint with no support and immediately turned the ball over last night…and people think he’s a PG.
Imagine if he went to the rack with the attitude of Ron Holland
He’d probably turn it over even more if he did that.
OTE really tricked us on the Thompson twins playmaking abilities
Anybody who bases their opinion off high school ball from 3 years ago is not worth even hearing.
I agree. They are both wings
A lot of his turnovers are bad, but a lot of them are also just because the pistons have no shot creators or shooters on the floor with him
The pistons were trying harder and were healthy in the regular season. Which allowed em to get 60 wins.
The turnovers are all him, Orlando knows exactly where he wants to pass and jumps the lane.
Yes it literally is
He’s also averaging like 40 points a game and like 10 assists and like 9 rebounds
Why not just pump this numbers up if you’re just gonna lie. Cade’s averaging a 60 point quadruple double
Partially. But he’s also just very careless and tends to telegraph passes.
Though that could also be from fatigue of being the only guy on the floor capable of dribbling in a straight line.
Downvoted, no reply. Use your words redditor
So basically the pistons suck is what I’m hearing from pistons fans.
We don’t think that changing what got you 60 wins in the playoffs is a recipe for success.
What makes it a potential assist? Does it judge how open the receiver is or just any time you pass and the receiver gets a shot up?
From nba.com, the definition reads
Any pass to a teammate who shoots within 1 dribble of receiving the ball
Kind of an odd tracking system imo. I’d much rather see xG like in hockey
Yeah, it’s kind of half baked. Would be good to see it against the expected shots made on shots after his passes.
Yeah we have all the shot zones and success for every player, why not just convert it into xP instead of having a “guy took a shot” stat
counts the missed FGs as well as teh made ones when it could have been an assist.
The Pistons as a whole are shooting 26.8% on wide open 3s, and 32% on open 3s.
12.4 3PA on open 3s, and 14.2 3PA on wide open 3s.
We’re shooting 29.6 3PA total a game, so 26.6 of 29.6 is either open (4-6 feet) or wide open (6+ Feet) which is 90% of our 3s attempted.
So in regards to your question, any pass to a 3P shot is very open, we are just shooting far below what we were shooting in the regular season (35% on all 3s, and ~37% on wide open 3s).
If you remove Cade and Duncan Robinson, the team is shooting 21% from 3.
Source: NBA.com
just any time you pass and the receiver gets a shot up?
This, but that makes sense because it’s literally how assists are tracked. If you pass to someone triple teamed and they make it, you still get the assist. So it should count as a potential assist
What I’m getting from this is that SGA, Barnes, Holiday and Tatum are underrated as playmakers because nobody ever really talks about their playmaking abilities.
Everyone already knows Cade is an incredible playmaker.
People absolutely talk about those players as playmakers lol
It mainly means that players tend to shoot when they get the ball from those players. It’s easy to be tempted to get more from it, but that’s all it really tells us. Just too many outside variables otherwise
Maybe people don’t talk about Scottie much cuz he doesn’t get covered as much as players of his skill are by the National media but Scottie’s best trait on O is his playmaking has been his passing since before he was drafted. He was the backup PG on FSU in his college season. People who do discuss him know he’s an elite playmaker and he’s been the point guard in the playoffs with IQ out. Quick might average more assists and team assists for the raps are spread out but Scottie being an elite passer is limited a bit by him not having an elite handle to operate in space compared to some other tall ball handlers like Cade and Lamelo but he’s been stepping up in the role in this Cavs series partially because they lack wing defenders who can deal with his physicality while disrupting that dribble.
Dude needs some help
If only somebody had considered that before the trade deadline
Ivey was supposed to be that guy til his leg got snapped and he fell into religious psychosis
As defined, “potential assists”—any pass to a teammate who shoots within 1 dribble of receiving the ball—is such a weird stat to me because context matters, and that “potential assist” could be a pass at the end the clock to a non-shooter who is double covered and has to jack a shot to avoid the violation, and that’s not the same as a pass to a wide open shooter on a play that was designed to free them up.
I replied to someone else on this, but I don’t think it’s weird at all. That same exact example would get an assist, so why would it not get a potential assist?
Seeing additional “open” context is always helpful, but the base “potential assist” stat not having that context makes the most sense because normal assists have zero context
Yeah, it’s useful, but has its limitations also.
i mean if you watch cade you would know that he is the one getting all the grenades. if its late in a shot clock, you can be sure someone is panic passing to cade
I mean, from like game 2 onwards he’s been an entirely shoot first PG like Shai. He’s averaging the 2nd most PPG in the playoffs right behind Shai (minimum 4 games)
Ah I see pistons fans have discovered the Trae Young stat that will drive them insane. Nothing more annoying than seeing your point guard make an incredible pass to a wide open man only they could see only for the recipient of said pass to then shoot an awful brick. Last season trae had 12 assists a game and TWENTY potential assists a game, that difference was like 3 or 4 assist bigger than the next guy on the list lol.
Fair, but that’s assuming all shots go in, when a 50% hit rate is considered good/great in the NBA. It’s like saying a block is worth 2 points.
My point is that the difference between potential assists and assists for Trae was much higher than the other assist leaders. Trae averaged 11.6 assists to 20.8 potential assists in the 2025 season. Jokic averaged 10.2 assists to 16.5 potential assists, Haliburton 9.2 assists to 15.8 potential assists. So hawks players converted on 56% of potential assists from Trae, whereas nuggets players converted on 62% of potential assists from Jokic.
It was more a commentary on how they calculate the difference between actual and potential. And woah, I had no idea the disparity was that high! That’s wild. And a little upsetting. Thanks for taking CJ and putting him to good use, btw.
Trae is the best passing guard in the league and I will die on that hill lol. And yeah of course, he’s been awesome and seems like a really good dude all around. Weirdly a good successor in Trae in that regard, small guards who off the court just like to chill with their wives and kids.
Tbf this has also very much been a Cade stat since we got him. Starting alongside Killian Hayes will rack up some potential assists.
Downvoted so I guess not. My bad. Guess I imagined all those misses.
This is definitely more about how Orlando won’t defend these players than it is about Cade.
Meet potential-man!
I dont really like the potential assists metric. An open three for Jalen Duren counts as the same for Tim Hardaway Jr three. It does not take a genius to figure out those two passes are not equally smart and take same amount of skill
Also, drawing 2 defenders to set up a wide open attempt counts the same as eating up the shot clock and then dumping it off to some poor sap who has to jack up a contested prayer at the buzzer. It’s useful, but also limited.
That’s also a good argument
The real trouble with the Pistons longer term is Duren and Thompson are two cornerstones of their future and neither can shoot a lick. This isn’t something that can be solved just by getting better shooters because they can’t really swap these guys without deciding to go in a different direction.
Potential assists? Are we serious right now? What a joke of a stat.
All stats have to be taken in context. Harden passing to a big man at the rim leads to a different assist number than the years Harden had to pass to a big man that didn’t want to go to the rim.
Ok…. Someone explain to me how this stat could be accurate at all. Because half the assists scored in the league don’t even look like assists. It’s one of the most subjective metrics in sports. So how do you even measure potential assists?
I don’t mean to take away from Cade but it’s not like the Pistons are really getting good looks on offense when I watch games. The shooting is poor but the offense as a whole just doesn’t look good as a result of the spacing. It’s not like Ausar is bombing away from three and selling Cade’s stats.
I wonder if this ratio isn’t also representative of created shot quality. In the mid 2010s a lot of noise was made about how guys would have career high efficiency playing next to premier playmakers like Wall, LeBron, and Paul. For example Jokic’ high ratio of potential to converted assists could be a product of all the cutting and easy baskets the Nuggets try to create on offense.
At this point, feel he’d be better off keeping the ball instead of trying to throw passes that either lead to bad misses or bad turnovers.
Constantly finding guys for open threes and those guys are shooting horrendous other than Duncan Robinson - and Duncan isn’t shooting enough
Meaning his team ass
What do you call the head Grammar Nazi?
Mein Fewer
They added Huerter and Robinson for this but I guess they suck balls
Fewer
I get why Cade and Shai is number 1 and 2 both teams got a more than a few brick layers who great defenders tho
Suns should really try to get Jrue.
It’s a shame Cade cannot pass the ball to himself
Is — Is that… Lebron averaging the second most assists in 2k26? Jesus fucking Christ.
I’ve long said that potential assists should be counted and talked about more. It’s always dumb that a player misses out on a stat because his teammate bricked a wide open shot. Does this example also count plays where the shooter was fouled and prevented a FG?
Actual assists not being granted for a pass to a guy who shoots, gets fouled, and makes the shots has always been ridiculous to me.
I still remember when Pistons fans wouldn’t trade Jaden Ivey + salary filler and picks for Trey Murphy…..
Who was the ‘salary filler’ in this memory?
Ivey was averaging 18 on 40% from three before Cole Anthony broke his leg in half, what could’ve been. Our GM drafted Trey Murphy so if he wasn’t doing that trade that tells u all abt how they saw Ivey pre injury.
Dude plays ref ball. Literally none of his points are his own.
Yea the refs gave him all 45 last night it’s so messed up
Is a passing turnover recorded as a potential assist?
This is partially since teams are willing to leave his other teammates open, rather than saying he is the best creator/passer
Potential assists? wtf are these new stats lol
Potential assists has been a stat for decades
But it’s also awful on a small sample size and it’s not a great stat in general, it’s basically a pass to a shot which anyone like Cade who is teams main ball handler and has the ball 80% of the time will have a lot of them
It’s really not that hard to understand.
If a person would have made the shot, would it have been an assist? If so, that’s a potential assist.
Ah thanks for dumbing it down for me lol that makes sense
Its amazing that that’s being tracked now. In European football “chances created” is arguably a more important stat than assists bc it lets you more accurately see the creating player’s contributions to the team bc often a great midfielder or winger is wasted by a tin-pot trash-can masquerating as a striker. The same thing happens in NBA w/ great passers passing to guys shooting 25% from 3.
Football has xG/xAG/xA which is way better and more intricate than this
This is an awful stat, it’s a pass leading to a shot just like chances created it doesn’t take into account what kind of shot it was an how good it was
If you drop a pass at a teammate 22 seconds into the shotclock and your teammate has to shoot a shitty shot over someone it’s a potential assist
well xAST and xPPG should be tracked in NBA too if its not already
There’s some sites under paywalls that have shot quality, teams probably have very good stats that are not public
A way to support the narrative.
Been saying it Cade is on the same tier as Luka, sga and jokic his rosters just terrible
He is definetly tier below.
His efficiency is below these guys by far, his playmaking on paper is amazing and on par, but for some reason, i dont think he has the same impact as a playmaker as for example Luka has
He is great. But he 100% isnt in that tier. Not luka and specially not jokic/sga
…..bless your heart
Definitely not on the same tier, He’s on the #5-10 tier, pretty much the same player as Brunson except more turnover prone.
jokic isn’t in the sga/luka tier anymore he fell off. you should’ve said wemby instead