Cade Cunningham Just Did Something No NBA Player Has Done in Almost 50 Years
The Pistons guard dropped a career-high 52 points with zero turnovers in a wild double-overtime win over the Wizards — and became the first player since steals and turnovers were tracked to post a 50-10-0 line.
DETROIT — Cade Cunningham delivered the best game of his career on Thursday night, scoring a career-high 52 points with 11 assists and zero turnovers to lead the Detroit Pistons past the Washington Wizards, 144-140, in double overtime.
According to OptaSTATS, Cunningham became the first NBA player to record 50 points, 10 assists and zero turnovers in a single game since the league began officially tracking turnovers in the 1977-78 season — a stat line that had simply never happened before, per NBA.com's recap.
A career night, twice over
Cunningham scored 30 of his 52 points in the fourth quarter and the two overtime periods alone, carrying Detroit through a game that needed two separate clutch shots just to survive regulation and the first extra period. Washington's Trae Young forced the first overtime with a buzzer-beating three, and AJ Dybantsa sent the game to a second overtime with a basket at the final horn, according to Yahoo Sports.
"THE BEST I'VE EVER DONE IT."
That quote from Cunningham understates it a little: his previous career high was 46 points, set just over a year ago — also against Washington. Thursday's outing broke that mark by six points while adding a near-flawless ballhandling performance under immense fatigue across 58 minutes of basketball.
What it means
The win keeps Detroit's hot start to the season rolling and adds fresh fuel to the early-season MVP conversation, where Cunningham's name has increasingly come up alongside Luka Dončić and Victor Wembanyama. A zero-turnover night at that usage rate, in a game that went 58 minutes, is the kind of efficiency teams build championship runs around — and it's exactly the growth the Pistons have been waiting to see from their franchise point guard since drafting him first overall in 2021.
What's next
The Pistons continue their homestand this week looking to extend their winning streak, while the Wizards will try to regroup after squandering two separate leads in the extra periods. Cunningham's zero-turnover, 50-point, double-digit-assist line is now etched into the record books — and the league will be watching to see how long it stands.