Cade Cunningham explained why he ‘loves’ playing the Celtics

The NBA season remains to be younger, however at this second it’s the Detroit Pistons who sit atop the Eastern Conference standings with a league-best 21-5 report.

Detroit dealt with its enterprise down the stretch on Monday night time, pulling off a 112-105 win over the Celtics at TD Backyard. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla stated the sport had a playoff-like really feel to it.

Even with out Jayson Tatum, the Celtics are within the combine for playoff place within the East. Because the younger Pistons proceed to ascend, they nonetheless view the Celtics as a staff to measure themselves towards, guard Cade Cunningham stated.

“They’re a championship staff; they’ve received a championship identification,” Cunningham informed reporters, per MassLive. “Play a terrific model of basketball, so it’s all the time a check for us coming in. It’s a recreation we love coming in for as a result of we all know that they’re going to check us and play good basketball.”

Theese Celtics are clearly fairly totally different from the 2024 squad that received all of it. Jrue Vacation, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, and Luke Kornet are all enjoying elsewhere. Tatum remains to be rehabbing from his torn achilles harm.

However, with Jaylen Brown averaging a career-high 29.3 factors per recreation, scoring assist from Derrick White and Payton Pritchard, and regular contibutions from Neemias Queta, Mazzulla has been capable of mix-and-match function gamers and reply a number of the query marks this staff entered the season with.

“I feel earlier than the season, we definitely had the depth,” Mazzulla stated earlier than the sport. “It was only a matter of how they have been going to make an impression. It wasn’t a matter of if they may, it was in what method.

“Was it Josh [Minott] on the 4? Who of our guys would tackle beginning the sport being the defender and who’s going to take that on later within the recreation? We knew that we might and I feel you’ve seen the product of what we name our depth and our capability to impression the sport in numerous methods.”

The Celtics dropped to fourth within the Jap Convention with the loss. Detroit remained in first. However, Cunningham hasn’t forgotten in regards to the robust instances that helped this Pistons group, together with the historic 28-game shedding streak that they had in 2023.

“I all the time bear in mind the place we’ve been,” Cunningham stated. “Carry that with us all over the place we go. We don’t get too excessive as a result of we’ve been on the backside of it. We’ve been the place we’ve been trying to find solutions. But additionally not getitng too low, figuring out that it could all the time flip round. We’ve got all of the expertise within the room to get the job executed.”

Khari A. Thompson

Sports activities Reporter

Khari Thompson covers skilled sports activities for Boston.com. Earlier than becoming a member of the staff in 2022, Khari coated school soccer for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.