I’m not afraid to say that it’s incredible how good it feels when Detroit can get a win. Losses? For the most part they don’t bother me anymore, I’m numb to it after all these years of rebuilding. But wins? Inject it DIRECTLY into my veins, repeatedly.

In a game where it would have been easy to stop pushing after falling behind more than ten points, in a season lost months ago, on a team that nearly set a generationally-awful losing streak, the Detroit Pistons led by the suntanned Cade Cunningham’s elite guard play, managed to curb-stomp the Chicago Bulls in what was according to their TV commentary crew, “an embarrassing loss” for the team fighting to make the play-in tournament.

Aided by the fact that Chicago was an abysmal 2/29 beyond the long-line, Detroit adapted on defense and started nailing the 3-Ball through newcomer Simone Fontecchio’s own 5/9, Cade Cunningham’s 3/5, and surprisingly Ausar Thompson’s 2/4.

The return of Isaiah Stewart wasn’t all sunshine as he generally looked a bit rusty from the field, but nearly bringing a double-double in his first game in 11 since he last played is hardly what I’d call a bad performance for the 4th year player out of Washington who makes is presence felt on the defensive end even when his shots aren’t falling and the ball slips through his buttered fingers.

Questions need to be asked as to what is the best lineup on a night-to-night basis between Fontecchio and Stewart, with Fontecchio looking like the surefire plug and play veteran wing that the team could reasonably expect Stewart to be in a few years, providing reliable spacing and perimeter defense in the truest sense of the term “3 & D”. The add-on bonus would be that James Wiseman might never see the floor again.

The all-bench lineup continues to be horrific. The combined +/- (including Fontecchio, who was largely the only scoring threat off the bench) was -59. The starting 5 was +105. Such massive gaps in performance between the two units aren’t going to work over the long-haul (as if the team’s record would indicate anything else) and it continues to puzzle me as to why Monty continues to run a 10 man rotation. The one positive tonight was that Fournier only played a total of 5.5 minutes, perhaps signaling an end to the misery off the bench.

An additional point of frustration for me at home is the questionable decision making which directly leads to turnovers. While Cade has managed to calm them down as the season has gone on, Ivey and Duren are still making the same sorts of mistakes over and over again, with the former still too often driving in with no clear plan and passing out to the opposite team, and the latter playing a bit too much point-center for my liking, tossing a few misguided bounce passes into too tight of windows.

The narrative for this team at the start of the season through the final months has been centered around Cade Cunningham. Is Cade that player you build around, a player who will be a superstar in this league? After a few slow games returning from injury, he’s once again back to playing at an elite level, playing smart opportunistic basketball, oftentimes completely dominating the floor for lengthy stretches where he can more or less get anything he wants.

In the 4 games post All-Star break, Cunningham has averaged 28.5/6.3/5.5 on a TS% of 71.6%, which is approximately 15% higher than the league average for PGs this season, all while getting a generationally-terrible whistle. What else made an appearance around the same time? A golden brown suntan, no doubt acquired through a timely trip to every NBA player’s favorite downtime destination: Cabo.

Is there a connection beyond the rest and relaxation + mental reset + additional recovery time + a much stronger roster post-trade deadline? I can’t be certain, but all I can say is we need to get this man a tanning bed for his crib.