There was once a time, just a few years ago, when the Washington Wizards and the Detroit Pistons were splashing around in the same dank corner of the NBA's standings.

The brothers in rebuild finished as the only teams to serve out the 2023-24 regular season without exceeding the 15-win mark, with the Pistons only barely taking the cake with a 28-game losing streak that extended through two full months of play. Cade Cunningham's individual efforts weren't enough to spare him and his fledgling supporting case from attracting the rest of the league's ire, with the Wizards' own Kyle Kuzma chiming into the dogpile with an infamous attempted-roast that did no one involved any favors: "at this point its like "don't be that team."

At this point its like “dont be that team” 🤣 https://t.co/qmWMgPt9Jz

— kuz (@kylekuzma) December 29, 2023

Whether he was referring to the Pistons as the sport's punching bag or the league-wide race to avoid being the Pistons' streak-ending savior, the bad juju his tweet spun has lingered long after Kuzma's days as a Wizard. Cunningham, now a multiple-time All-Star who's paying dividends on Detroit's decision to draft him first-overall back in 2021, has blossomed into the new scariest Wizards killer.

Cunningham Adding On to History

Ever since that fateful Kuzma comment, one the Pistons followed up by mercifully ending the historic schneid in their very next game, they've gone on to notch playoff appearances in every season since, notably peaking as last spring's top seed out east.

Winning 60 games and depositing a 46-point triple-double over the Wizards evidently wasn't enough for Cunningham last year, as he somehow one-upped himself this week to continue on raising the Pistons' stakes. He notched 52 points and 11 assists without spewing any turnovers, the first-such statline in NBA history, completely overpowering the Wizards' futile attempts at ending their own developing losing streak in a double-overtime 144-140 effort for the ages.

CADE CUNNINGHAM: FIRST PLAYER TO RECORD 50+ POINTS, 10+ ASSISTS WITH ZERO TURNOVERS SINCE 1977-78!

🔥 52 POINTS (30 IN 4Q/OT/2OT)
🔥 11 ASSISTS
🔥 16-25 FGM

DETROIT WINS A THRILLER IN 2OT. pic.twitter.com/0iX0hF8kFj

— NBA (@NBA) November 13, 2026

He wasn't just chucking to save his otherwise-lackluster scoring partners, of which he was saddled with many on this particular evening. He posted a true shooting percentage of 79% on 16/25 shooting with five made 3-pointers and 17 free throw makes on 18 attempts. His Pistons sustained not one, but two buzzer-beating shots to add additional overtime periods from Trae Young and AJ Dybantsa, and Cunningham never flinched in doing whatever the matchup called for.

His processing, just as much as his raw shooting touch, was what led him to a successful career-high, surpassing the single-game point total high-water mark that he'd set against these Wizards this time last year.

Naturally, given Washington's place at the wrong end of another bit of Cunningham mastery, the incredulous questions were sure to follow. How did they allow the star guard, who can't shoot that efficiently while averaging half of those points on a nightly basis, make such easy work of the Wizards' lengthy offense? How could they not disrupt his strategy, let alone pick off the high-usage, turnover-happy guard for any loose balls?

It's true that, yes, they didn't have to leave Cunningham quite so many open lanes to the basket, but they can't be too hard on themselves for some of the high-volume outside jumpers that opponents are willing to cede to the streaky shooter. And according to Wizards head coach Brian Keefe postgame, his team did, in fact, succeed on the rare occasions in which they attempted to flummox the creator with late-game surprise coverages.

But for everyone who's faulted the Wizards' slow, still-ongoing ascent to competence compared to the Pistons' quick rise following that disaster campaign three years ago, Cunningham represents the difference between two wildly-different construction patterns. While the Pistons got their centerpiece early-on before spending the next few years gathering his most helpful supporting cast members, Washington is only now getting to implement their own draft prize in Dybantsa. And though he lost this particular duel, scoring 47 fewer points than Detroit's victorious star, he and his own point guard in Young can look forward to even more thrilling shootouts within this matchup down the line.