Cade Cunningham deal: Former No. 1 overall pick reportedly gets five-year, $226 million extension with Pistons

Cade Cunningham is signing a five-year, $226 million max rookie extension to remain with the Detroit Pistons, according to The Athletic's Shams Charania and James Edwards. Cunningham was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, and despite missing most of the 2022-23 season due to injury, he bounced back with a strong 2023-24 campaign even as his team floundered. He averaged 22.7 points, 7.5 assists and 4.3 rebounds for the Pistons last season as they won 14 games and finished with the NBA's worst record.

Notably, the initial reporting here was for the $226 million max figure. That is obviously a significant amount of money, but it's far lower than the $270 million that Scottie Barnes, the No. 4 pick in that same 2020 draft, reportedly signed for. The difference would seemingly come in the form of Rose Rule escalators. The maximum amount Cunningham or Barnes could have been guaranteed was $226 million. However, with those escalators, they could have earned an additional $44 million by making an All-NBA Team, winning Defensive Player of the Year or winning MVP next season. Barnes seemingly has those escalators in his contract. The reporting thus far suggests that Cunningham will not.

The Pistons are still in the middle of a rebuild that began before Cunningham even arrived, and that rebuild was reset this offseason when they hired Trajan Langdon as the team's new top basketball executive. He then fired head coach Monty Williams, which means Cunningham will now have his third head coach in four seasons in Detroit. The Pistons hired former Cleveland Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff to fill that position on Sunday.

Now Detroit will have to figure out how to put a roster around Cunningham that makes sense, because so far, the current group doesn't exactly fit. The roster is filled with young players that struggle to shoot 3-pointers, and they just added another one in No. 5 overall pick Ron Holland. Cunningham is a decent shooter, but it is not his strength. He will need more spacing around him if he is going to live up to this contract.

But Detroit's first order of business this offseason was ensuring that its most talented young player would stick around for the long haul. They've done so. Cunningham will be a Piston for the remainder of the decade, and now it is up to Detroit to figure out how to maximize his talent moving forward.