Pistons Open the NBA Season in the Spotlight as Cade Cunningham and Detroit Host Celtics

The Detroit Pistons opened the 2026-27 NBA season in front of the entire basketball world on Tuesday, hosting the Boston Celtics at Little Caesars Arena in the first game of the league’s first-ever nationally televised opening-day tripleheader. A 3 p.m. ET matinee tip on NBC turned a Tuesday afternoon in the Motor City into a league-wide event, and it is the reason “Pistons” is among the most talked-about topics online today.

Detroit enters the year as the franchise’s best team in two decades. Last season the Pistons won 60 games, finished 60-22 as the No. 1 seed in the East and were the NBA’s feel-good story before falling to the Cleveland Cavaliers in seven games in the conference semifinals. Cade Cunningham has anchored the roster, with Jalen Duren, Ausar Thompson and Duncan Robinson all in the opening-day mix, and the Pistons took three of four meetings from Boston a year ago.

Cade Cunningham Sets the Tone Early

Cunningham wasted little time asserting himself. Early in the first quarter he scored six straight points for Detroit, capped by a thunderous fast-break dunk that sent the Little Caesars Arena crowd into a frenzy. The same stretch included a sharp assist to new Pistons forward John Collins and a fadeaway jumper out of the post, a possession that began with Cunningham off the ball while Ausar Thompson handled point guard duties. That look is a wrinkle Detroit wants to use more often this season, and it showed up on the biggest stage on day one.

Cunningham carried strong momentum into the opener. In the preseason he put up 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting with seven assists in a 129-125 win over the Toronto Raptors. By the end of the first quarter Cunningham led Detroit with six points on 3-of-5 shooting, and all five Pistons starters had already scored. The home team was just 2-of-9 from three, but it shot 9-of-14 inside the arc while getting its hands into passing lanes and controlling the glass.

New Faces, Familiar Identity

The Pistons have changed a bit around their star. Collins arrived this offseason to fill the role vacated by Tobias Harris and was Detroit’s early leading scorer, with four points when the first timeout arrived and the score tied at 13. Duren, who signed a new contract with Detroit this fall, remains a centerpiece of the frontcourt.

The Celtics, meanwhile, are a very different group than the one that bowed out to Philadelphia in the first round. Boston traded Jaylen Brown to the 76ers for Paul George and two first-round picks, and Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley Jr. made their Celtics debuts. Jayson Tatum, a year removed from his Achilles injury, finished the first quarter with a buzzer-beating leaner that gave Boston a 28-27 edge, and the game stayed tight into the second quarter, tied at 39-39 with 7:21 left in the half. Robinson briefly limped off after tweaking his left ankle but stayed in the game.

The market had Boston as a slim road favorite of roughly one to 1.5 points with a total in the 219.5 to 222.5 range, a flip from the summer when Detroit was the favorite. For bettors comparing lines across the FanDuel Promo Code offer and other books, the early-season spread on a game like this is a reminder of how quickly the market is still recalibrating Detroit after its 60-win season.

What Opening Day Means for Detroit

The Pistons have spent the lead-up to opening day answering the same question: are they being overlooked? Despite the 60-win season and the top seed in the East, much of the national conversation has shifted to Boston’s retooled roster and to the defending champion Knicks, who open against the 76ers later today. Detroit’s message has been that the only thing that matters is what the team does on the floor. Opening the entire NBA schedule at home, with a national audience, hands them an immediate chance to make that point.

A single game does not define an 82-game season, but opening-night results carry narrative weight, and Detroit knows it. A strong showing against a Celtics team that went 56-26 last year would reinforce the idea that last season was no fluke, while a slow start would invite the skeptics. For anyone trying to put the numbers in context, the odds and probability calculator is a quick way to convert those opening lines into implied win chances.

Detroit’s next test is not far away, and the schedule will quickly show whether the Pistons’ opening-day formula travels. The core question for the season is simple: can Cunningham, Duren and Thompson prove that 60 wins was the beginning rather than the peak? On a day when the NBA put Detroit front and center, the Pistons got the first chance to answer it.