The Good, Bad and Ugly Of Weeks 17 and 18 Of The 2025-26 NBA Season

With the NBA All-Star break interrupting the regular season schedule, we too took a break from our weekly The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly recap. This week, we blend in some of the regular season news with NBA All-Star Saturday to bring you a double dose of what’s been happening around the NBA. 

THE GOOD: 

As the first overall pick from the 2021 NBA Draft, there were lofty expectations for Cade Cunningham to lead the Detroit Pistons back to respectability. That didn’t happen right away. In fact, in his first three seasons, the Pistons finished with 23, 17, and 14 wins. It wasn’t until last year that the team put it all together.  The guy leading the way for the Pistons' first winning season in a decade, Cunningham, who finished the year making his first All-NBA Team (3rd), was named an All-Star and in the top ten for MVP voting. This year, Cunningham has entered the conversation for the top five MVP voting.  Highlighting the last two weeks of Detroit’s schedule, Cunningham put up 42 points, 13 assists, and eight rebounds at Madison Square Garden, to lead Detroit to a series sweep over the New York Knicks.  When ESPN's Vincent Goodwill asked Cunningham if he thought he was the MVP, the answer was blunt but honest: "I think I am. And if you don't agree with me, that's your opinion."  Cunningham’s response was hard to argue, as Detroit holds the best record in the league. With Shai Gilgeous-Alexander injured and Nikola Jokic flirting with games-played eligibility limits, the MVP race is wide open. 

THE BAD: 

The Sacramento Kings came into this season with playoff hopes and a roster built to compete. Those hopes were squashed very early in the season, as the Kings are the league's worst team. Right after the All-Star break, Sacramento announced that both Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine are dealing with season-ending surgeries, with Sabonis suffering from a torn meniscus in his left knee and LaVine suffering from a tendon injury in his right hand.  Those are the team's two highest-paid players on the shelf. Add in newly acquired De’Andre Hunter, who played just two games, and the Kings enter the stretch run of the season at a league-worst 12-44, in the middle of a 14-game losing streak, having long been eliminated from playoff contention.  The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that tanking the rest of the season now improves their lottery odds in what projects to be a loaded 2026 draft class. 

THE UGLY: 

It seems like every year, the media and fans have this conversation, and every year, the NBA somehow makes it worse. The 2026 AT&T Slam Dunk Contest featured four participants that most fans hardly knew of, including two rookies (Carter Bryant and Jase Richardson) and a pair of borderline roster players (Keshad Johnson and Jaxson Hayes). Johnson, a Miami Heat forward recently recalled from the G League with fewer than 40 career NBA games to his name, and spent more time dancing than dunking, was crowned the champion. Kenny Smith and Draymond Green joined many who are calling for the contest to be scrapped entirely, and at this point it's hard to argue. Until the NBA finds a way to get marquee names back in the mix, which may be sooner than later if Victor Wembanyama actually holds to his word, this may be the last time for a while that we see it as part of All-Star Weekend.