on three to one
Basketball, cooking, and perseverance
Just two weeks ago, Cade Cunningham woke up with a collapsed lung. He woke up in a brace, in pain and discomfort and restlessness and did not know whether or not he would be able to return to his job anytime soon.
I do not know the pain of a collapsed lung, nor do I wish to, but I know the pain of not being able to return to something you love. I know the pain of waking up without a sense of where the day will bring you. I know the pain of feeling like you have nearly reached the pinnacle of your dreams, only for your lungs to give out, for the air to run dry at the very last second.
Cade Cunningham’s job is the best in the world. It is to lead the Detroit Pistons, a team of exceptional athletes and personalities, to an NBA championship, an achievement the team hasn’t reached in nearly two decades.
In recent years, they have come remarkably close. After a period of hopelessness and disappointment and serving as a retirement tour for aging superstars, the burden was placed on Cunningham, a standout at Oklahoma State, to kickstart this process. They finished with the worst record in the league in 2023. Cunningham established himself as a force, a legitimate playmaker, in 2024. Finally, they reached the playoffs in 2025. And now, in 2026, they’ve returned for vengeance, having overcome a three games to one deficit to defeat the Orlando Magic in the first round.
In basketball, going down three games to one is a death note. With only three games left to play in a best-of-seven series, you’ve got to win all three straight – while your opponent only needs one. It is a remarkable hill to climb, and one that only 16 teams have completed.
When I was 16, I began my very first job as a prep cook – a commis, as I was jokingly called – at a restaurant back in Connecticut. Before learning how to cook, how to use a knife, how to plate, however, I was taught how to communicate with the other staff members. The very first word I learned was cuisiner, the French word for “to cook.” Without the act of cooking, without the intensity of learning cuisiner, there would be no end result. Cooking comes before the cook.
The basic idea behind cuisiner, behind cooking as an industry, is to add heat to food. Once heat is added to ingredients, their entire composition changes, and so does their flavor profile. The concept, as chef Daniel Bouloud says, is simple. “The variations are infinite.”
When the Pistons lost Game 4 against the Magic, and began facing the three-to-one deficit they feared, they had to learn the game they love again. I do not know what went on in the locker room after that loss. I would not like to know what was discussed there or what words were fired off.
But, if I had to guess, it would be this: cooking comes before the cook. Before they drafted Cunningham, the Pistons front office (if I had to guess) knew that there was something wrong. They understood that there was a fundamental disconnect between the output they expected and the output that they were receiving.
The next two years that followed his draft were years of both excitement and disappointment. A classic case of trial and error. The cook had finally stepped into the kitchen, yet the communication of their strategy, of cuisiner, had failed them both.
This year’s playoffs, finding themselves down three-to-one, it was time for the Pistons to test their mantra. The heat was, quite literally, turned on.
Those who have cooked professionally know that it is difficult to focus in a hot kitchen. After my first few weeks, I began to understand this. Plates are turning, hands are slippery, and words move faster in your brain than out of your mouth. Some people are left happy and others are not. It is hard to tell which will be which until it’s too late.
I would cut my finger nearly every day at that restaurant. It was not a collapsed lung, sure, but it hurt. In some way, it was my way of learning the process, of communicating that there will be deficits that we face, there will be times of disconnect, there will be cuts and bruises and collapsed lungs. After all, these too can be overcome.