His first 50 took two overtimes — and he never gave the ball away.
Cade Cunningham scored 52 points on Thursday night in Washington, the first 50-point game of his career, and the Detroit Pistons needed nearly every one of them. Two overtimes, a buzzer-beater against them at the end of regulation and another one at the end of the first overtime — all of it had to happen before Detroit finally put away the Washington Wizards, 144–140, at Capital One Arena.
The milestone itself had been a long time forming. Across his first 306 career games, Cunningham had never scored 50; his previous high was 46. He cleared the bar on 16-of-25 shooting and 17-of-18 at the free-throw line, in 48 minutes of a 58-minute game. And the scoring is only half the line: 11 assists against zero turnovers, in a game that kept handing the ball back to Washington and asking him to win it again.
Washington kept refusing
The Wizards were playing their second game in two nights, carrying a losing streak, and they played like neither fact applied to them. Trae Young scored 37 points with 14 assists. Anthony Davis had 30 points and 15 rebounds. Alex Sarr added 30 more. Three Washington players cleared 30 in the same game, the lead changed hands 20 times, and Detroit’s edge at halftime — 64–61 — never once felt like control.
Detroit thought it had the game won in regulation. Cunningham drew a foul from rookie AJ Dybantsa and stepped to the line with 1.8 seconds left, his two free throws pushing the lead to 121–118. Young answered with a three from 29 feet at the buzzer, and the game went to overtime tied at 121.
Once was not enough
The first overtime ran through Cunningham again. He hit a three to tie it at 130, then found Duncan Robinson in transition for the basket that put Detroit up 132–130 with nine seconds left. Dybantsa — the same rookie who had fouled Cunningham at the end of regulation — drove and pulled up at the buzzer to tie it at 132. A second overtime, then.
Davis fouled out early in the second overtime, and Detroit finally built something that held: a five-point lead, trimmed back when Bilal Coulibaly’s dunk tied the game at 140 with 1:14 left. The three that carried Cunningham past 50 came in that period, and his 12-foot jumper with 25 seconds remaining gave him 52 and put Detroit back in front, 142–140. Kevin Huerter’s free throws closed it out.
The second act
Cunningham will take the headline, and should. But Ausar Thompson bent this game in places the scoring line does not reach. Thompson finished with 17 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists — the assists a career high, past the nine he had never beaten in 224 previous games — with three steals and three blocks across 43 minutes.
His fingerprints are on the finish, too. In the second overtime, Thompson tipped in a basket for a 137–134 lead and then assisted on Robinson’s dunk to make it 139–136 — the two plays that gave Cunningham’s closing act a lead to protect. Daniss Jenkins added 21 off Detroit’s bench.
Detroit is 8–3, and this was its second win over Washington in four days after Monday’s 122–111 result in Detroit. Washington falls to 4–9 with six straight losses — a team that got 97 points from three players, forced two overtimes on the road team’s best night, and still went home with nothing. That is the size of what Cunningham did: his first 50 had to survive all of it.
Game Center — Detroit at Washington (final) · Stats Hub · NBA hub
