Harden drops 50 and shoots 20 free throws as Los Angeles drops Detroit
As Cade Cunningham looks to eventually ascend to the level of superstardom, James Harden delivered the blueprint for how to will your team to a win when they need you most. The Detroit Pistons fell 123-115 to a Los Angeles Clippers team undermanned and on the second night of a back-to-back. It took every bit of Harden’s season-high 50 points to get his team past the surging Pistons.
Cade Cunningham scored 37 points in the loss, adding 10 assists and seven rebounds. Cunningham was 15-of-25 from the floor and 2-of-7 from deep. Harden finished 14-of-24 and 6-of-13 from three. However, the biggest differentiator between the two stars came at the free-throw line. Cade was 5-of-6, a typical night for the ball-dominant point guard. Harden was 16-of-20.
To be clear, there were several reasons the Pistons lost the game in the end. The team shot just 31% from deep while allowing the Clippers to hit 54%. They had no answers for Ivica Zubac’s (22 points) baby hook shots. The team played incredibly small, with Tobias Harris out and Simone Fontecchio struggling in his 14 minutes. The fouls not only put the Clippers at the line, they clearly impacted the way the Pistons felt like they could play defense.
There were plenty of possessions where Detroit defenders were clearly more concerned with not fouling than they were with playing solid individual defense.
It wasn’t that the Pistons weren’t fouling Harden. For example, they egregiously and obviously fouled him twice behind the three-point line in the first quarter.
They were not phantom calls, they were differential calls. The kind of calls superstars spend their early years earning. It’s that when there was contact, Harden was getting the calls. Cade, as Pistons fans are all too familiar, has not learned the tricks or earned the respect of the refs to get to that level.
It was a point Cunningham acknowledged after the game. When he was asked how the Clippers were pull away from what was a back-and-forth game late in the fourth quarter, his response was to the point.
“Get calls.”
While Cunningham was clearly frustrated, it was more grudging respect than grousing over the outcome of the game. Cade is as aware of his career-long inability to coax calls from officials as anyone.
About Harden, Cade said, “He’s one of the best iso scorers the league has ever seen. I can’t put enough respect on his ability to score the ball, the ability to find angles and stuff,” Cunningham said. “Comparing the free throws between us two, I think a lot of that has to do with respect from the refs as far as experience. He’s been in this league killing for a long time. I understand it. I respect it. It’s hard for me to respect getting hit and not getting a call.”
Cunningham hasn’t spent those years in the league, and this is the first season he’s performed at a star (and All-Star level). Cunningham averages 16.9 drives per game, which ranks fifth in the NBA, and second in the league in drives that lead to field goal attempts behind only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He gets to the line about 60% as much as Shai. Cade has taken the third-most shots in the NBA this season but ranks 61st in free-throw attempt rate.
The alchemy of what is a natural instinct, what is learned, and what is earned by your status in the league is unclear, but Cunningham and his coach JB Bickerstaff seem to know that to get this team where they want to go, Cunningham has to get to the free-throw line more, and the Pistons have to earn the right to play tough defense.
Bickerstaff, for one, knows this is a marathon and not a sprint. That is why he isn’t shy about speaking up to the refs and will continually talk about his team’s ability to play the kind of defense he knows is required to win games, especially in the playoffs.
“Give (Harden) a ton of credit, but if you’re not allowed to put your body on him legally, and he is allowed to shoot 20 free throws, you’re not going to be able to guard him,” Bickerstaff said after the game.
Earlier this season, after an extremely chippy game against the Indiana Pacers that saw Isaiah Stewart get ejected, Bickerstaff perfectly summarized his responsibilities as a coach and his goals for his team:
“It is absolutely my responsibility to defend my guys. I will never, ever, stop doing that. Our guys will earn the respect of this league, but it’s my responsibility to defend them. I will always do that. It rubs some people the wrong way, but it doesn’t bother me. What we need, and what this team needs, we have to defend them, to stand up for them.”