{"id":52522,"date":"2025-08-01T12:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/52522\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T12:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:40:08","slug":"cade-cunningham-joins-legend-in-elite-nba-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/52522\/","title":{"rendered":"Cade Cunningham joins legend in elite NBA club"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cade Cunningham has a long way to go to reach Oscar Robertson\u2019s career, but he\u2019s well on his way and has already joined him in an exclusive NBA club.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cunningham and Robertson are the only two players to average 25 points, six rebounds and nine assists in a season before turning 24.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The wild thing about Robertson is that he not only did it in his rookie season at age 22, but averaged more than that for his career, finishing with a 25.7\/7.5\/9.5 stat line that earned him 12-straight All-Star selections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robertson also led the league in assists seven times in his career and led the league in scoring in the 1967-68 season in which he somehow finished just 5th in the MVP voting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cunningham finished a surprising 7th in the MVP voting<\/a> this season and was 4th in the league in assists per game, reached his first All-Star game and All-NBA team, so he\u2019s starting to rack up similar individual accolades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robertson is known as one of the greatest all-around players in NBA history. Could Cade Cunningham have a similar career? It\u2019s futile to compare players from different eras (there wasn\u2019t a 3-point line in Robertson\u2019s day, and the league didn\u2019t even keep track of blocks and steals) but there are aspects of Robertson\u2019s career Cade needs to emulate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cade Cunningham needs to stay healthy and be more efficient\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oscar Robertson played 64 or more games in all of his 14 seasons in the NBA, showing that part of any legendary career is being on the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cunningham had his best year in that regard, playing 70 games last season, a number that needs to be the baseline for him moving forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cunningham has put on strength in each offseason so far, and surgery to correct a long-time shin problem seems to have helped, so let\u2019s hope Cade\u2019s good health is sustainable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robertson was an efficient scorer who averaged 48 percent from the floor for his career, getting most of his buckets from the mid-range and near the rim. This is another area Cunningham needs to improve, especially around the rim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cade was very good in the mid-range, shooting 48 percent, but hit just over half of his shots under five feet, missing a ton of bunnies around the rim. To put it in perspective, MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander <\/a>hit 68 percent of his shots under five feet last season, though Cunningham did take more attempts per game in that area.<\/p>\n

Oscar Robertson was a master at getting to the free-throw line, averaging an incredible 8.8 free-throw attempts per game for his career, more than double what Cunningham has averaged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cade does not get a great whistle, something that will hopefully change next season after he made All-NBA and was featured in the playoffs. There are already signs of it happening, as Cunningham averaged seven free-throw attempts per game in the playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cunningham and Robertson are different players from different eras but do have undeniable similarities in their all-around games.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cade Cunningham has a long way to go to reach Oscar Robertson\u2019s career, but he\u2019s well on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-52522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}