NBA Draft 2021: 3 biggest winners and losers from draft lottery results

Winner No. 1 – Detroit Pistons

Ever since they won the NBA championship in 2004 and broke the team apart a couple of years later, the Pistons have been wandering around in the bottom of the Eastern Conference for over a decade. They made the backend of the playoffs a couple of times but at no point has this franchise been in a direction of being elite in the future.

Their issue has been the lack of starpower. They’ve had just two all-stars since 2009 (Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond) and their best guards arguably have been Reggie Jackson and Derrick Rose. Detroit has been good enough to avoid the bottom-tier of the league but not good enough to make the playoffs most of the time, let alone be good enough to advance.

But now, they have the No. 1 pick and will almost certainly take Cade Cunningham, arguably the best player in college basketball last season. The Big 12 Player of the Year averaged over 20 ppg, six rebounds, and 3.5 apg for Oklahoma State while being very good on the defensive end and making all of his teammates better.

The 6’8 guard can play any position on the perimeter but is best having the ball in his hands. He can play with last season’s top-10 draft pick point guard Killian Hayes in the backcourt, along with leading scorer forward Jerami Grant and sharpshooting wing Saddiq Bey.

Cunningham projects to be a star guard in the NBA and should easily have Detroit back in the national spotlight. The franchise will need to surround him with better talent outside of Grant in the years afterward but in a draft with plenty of great talent, the Cowboy star guard stands out on his own. And the Pistons will get to benefit from that in a major way.