Pistons All-Star Cade Cunningham Hosting Player-Led Minicamp in San Diego

According to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, Cade Cunningham and the Pistons players will be in San Diego this week, running a player-led minicamp as they approach their 2026-2027 season. After winning 60 games and coming within a game of the Eastern Conference Finals in the 2025-2026 season, the talk around the Detroit Pistons has been: how do they take the next step toward contention? And based on their actions, nobody is more eager to begin that work than Cade, who’s coming off a first-team All-NBA campaign.

It’s currently unclear whether Jalen Duren will join them, with his restricted free agency still unresolved. Seeing that J.B. Bickerstaff and Trajan Langdon have both raved about offseason participation in the past with their organization, however, it’s reasonable to expect that just about everyone else will be in attendance.

This type of behavior is not abnormal coming from All-Star players. Just this offseason, Victor Wembanyama hosted former Pistons forward Tobias Harris and other Spurs teammates in France for a Spurs minicamp. Wembanyama isn’t even the only player in his conference to host a team minicamp in France this summer, as LaMelo Ball and Anthony Edwards reportedly paid for their teammates to join them in Paris for a “team bonding and training trip.” Even Luka Doncic and the Los Angeles Lakers are training together right now in Serbia.

What this training does show, however, is that this Pistons team is just as confident as any team in the NBA that they can take the next step. Detroit also doesn’t have to go to bed at night questioning whether or not they have a true franchise player. Cade Cunningham has been a leader for the Motor City ever since being selected first overall in the 2021 NBA Draft. This type of minicamp is merely the next evolution in his maturity as a leader both on and off the floor.

This season’s Eastern Conference is poised to be the most contentious path to the Finals it has been in a long time. LeBron and Jaylen Brown with the young dynamic guards in Philadelphia, the Boston Celtics with a full season of Jayson Tatum, the Cavaliers were only a series away from a Finals trip themselves, and then there’s the defending champion New York Knicks. If the Pistons are going to be representing the East, they are going to need to maximize the potential of this roster. Teams that turn out to accomplish greatness normally start that journey with camps just like these.

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