On February 19, Beijing time, the NBA All-Star Weekend officially opened, in the rookie challenge that has ended, Barry has defeated Payton 50-48 and Isaiah 25-20 to win the victory, at the same time, the 2021 champion Cunningham was successfully elected as the rookie MVP, which is also the first MVP of Cunningham's career.
I have to say that in these two "small games", Cunningham played really well, and after two games, he got a total of 18 points, 7 rebounds and 9 assists:
In the first game against Payton, Canning shot 5-of-10 from the safe field, 2-of-4 from three-point range, and had 13 points, 5 rebounds and 6 assists, and he alone set more than half of the team's points;
In the second game against Isaiah, Cunningham still played well, with 2 of 3 and 1 of 2 three points, with 5 points, 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 steal.
In the final moments of the second game, when Barry only led Isaiah 21-20, it was Cunningham who hit a key three-pointer to help the team get the match point;
In the next leg, it was Cunningham again, with Altstadt stealing on the defensive end and Wagner fouling on the offensive end, who helped Barry win at the free throw line.
So, the rookie MVP awarded to Cunningham is well deserved, and the final vote also shows this - Cunningham received 6 of 9 votes.
After winning the rookie MVP, Cunningham said: "It means a lot, it's the game I've been looking forward to, to play with so many talented players and enjoy it while competing. ”
Of course, a rookie MVP doesn't say much, after all, there are many rookie MVPs in history but don't play, but Cunningham may really be different, at least from the performance so far in the season, he is definitely a talented player.
So far, Cunningham has played in 44 games for the Pistons, averaging 15.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, 5.2 assists and 1.3 steals per game, scoring first in the same year, fifth in rebounding, and second in assists and steals in the same year.
In terms of offensive efficiency, Cunningham shot only 39.4 percent from the field and 32.7 percent from three-point range, but shot 85.6 percent from the free throw line and 48.9 percent from the field — rookies are generally low, and Cunningham is a guard, which is not very good, but it is not particularly bad.
It needs to be said that Cunningham's performance has gone through some ups and downs.
In the first two games of the season, Cunningham played a disaster, he shot 1 of 8 in his debut, 5 of 3-pointers, only 2 points, 7 rebounds and 2 assists; in the second game, he was 2 of 14 and 9 of 3 points, with only 6 points, 2 rebounds and 3 assists.
After these two games, the outside world soon sounded the voice of "Cunningham is a parallel cargo", at that time, it was believed that Cunningham's physical talent was not outstanding, he was elected by virtue of the overall situation, shooting ability, offensive rhythm, and the result was 14 of 0 in the first two three-point games, which directly made people look dumbfounded.
Fortunately, Cunningham slowly adapted to the NBA, and in the 9th game of his career, Cunningham made fans aware of the strength of his champion for the first time - in the game against the Kings, Cunningham safely played 10 of 20, with 25 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists, and less than a week later, Cunningham had a triple-double of 13 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists in the game against the Lakers.
After entering December, Cunningham's performance has become more and more stable, playing in a total of 29 games, averaging 17.1 points, 4.9 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game, shooting 42.1%/38.3%/85.0% of the three-field shooting rate and shooting 51.5% of the true shooting rate.
For comparison, before moving into December, Cunningham averaged 13.0 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game, 33.5%/24.5%/86.7% shooting in three categories and 43.3% from the field.
In terms of the past month, Cunningham had 14-of-26 and 6-of-9 three-pointers in games against the Nuggets, with 34 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, the highest Score Canningham has ever had; in addition, in the game against the Cavaliers, Cunningham once again had a triple-double of 19 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists.
You can see that Cunningham is getting better and better, and it's obviously impossible to talk about him now, but, for now, Cunningham is really not the best player of this year — the Cavaliers' Mobly is playing better than him.
Of course, this is only the rookie season, Cunningham is a player with a lower limit, and he also has a leadership temperament, learning ability is also strong, this year's offseason will be very critical, maybe we can see him by leaps and bounds, I hope that in the future, we can see Cunningham lift more MVP trophies.