Sports / Basketball — The Pistons beat the 76ers 106-93 at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Sunday night, leading wire to wire behind Cade Cunningham’s 26 points, eight rebounds and eight assists to improve to 3-0 — the only unbeaten team left in the Eastern Conference — despite missing starters Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson. LeBron James, starting at center for short-handed Philadelphia, scored 18 in the 76ers’ first loss.
PHILADELPHIA — The Pistons vs 76ers score on Sunday night was the kind that rearranges an early-season standings page: Detroit Pistons 106, Philadelphia 76ers 93, at Xfinity Mobile Arena, in a meeting of the Eastern Conference’s last two unbeaten teams that stopped being a contest in the first four minutes and never quite became one again. Cade Cunningham scored 26 points with eight rebounds and eight assists, and Detroit led wire to wire to improve to 3-0 — the only unbeaten team left in the East. The Pistons did it without two starters: Jalen Duren, out at least two weeks with a strained right hamstring suffered Friday in Miami, and Ausar Thompson, who sprained his right ankle in the same game. Philadelphia, playing the second night of a back-to-back without Joel Embiid and VJ Edgecombe, fell to 3-1 with its first loss. The game account was reported by Reuters/Field Level Media and the Associated Press, with local coverage from the Detroit Free Press and USA Today.
How the Pistons beat the 76ers 106-93: a 15-1 opening and a lead that never changed hands
Detroit opened with a 15-1 run in the first 3:10, and the game’s shape never really changed after that. Cunningham scored 12 first-quarter points on 5-of-6 shooting as the Pistons led 34-22 after one, pushing the margin to as many as 18 in the quarter, and the lead reached 21 late in the first half on a Cunningham three-point play. LeBron James closed the half with three straight layups in a 9-0 run to make it 56-44 at the break — the first hint that Philadelphia had a response in it, and the last one that truly threatened the result.
Philadelphia cut the deficit to five early in the third quarter behind a 9-2 run, but Detroit rebuilt a double-digit lead and took a 79-69 edge into the fourth. The Sixers scored the first six points of the fourth to get within 79-75 behind Tyrese Maxey, before Duncan Robinson answered with back-to-back three-pointers to restore a 10-point cushion and Daniss Jenkins hit a three with 1:03 left to clinch it. The quarter splits — 34-22, 22-22, 23-25, 27-24 — describe a game Detroit controlled early, managed through the middle and closed without drama: the lead changed hands zero times.
LeBron James starting center: a 41-year-old at the five, and what it exposed
With Joel Embiid resting for right plantar fasciitis management a night after his 28-point triple-double against Milwaukee, and with Tacko Fall, Jabari Walker and Dominick Barlow all out as well, Philadelphia’s center rotation was a rumour. So the 76ers turned to the most famous emergency option in basketball: LeBron James — 41 years old, in his 24th NBA season and his first with Philadelphia — started at center for the first time since the 2021-22 season.
James scored 18 points on 8-of-15 shooting with five assists in 33 minutes, back after resting his back on Saturday, and he was typically honest afterwards about what the experiment was and was not. “I’m not here to have a sustainable role at the five … but it’s a role that we know we can tap into if we need it,” he said. Asked about the rebounding plan at the five, he borrowed Taurean Prince’s old line: “The ball goes up in the air, and you go grab the ball.”
The experiment was admirable, and it failed on the glass. Detroit outrebounded Philadelphia 54-37, turned 15 offensive rebounds into 24 second-chance points, and owned the extra possessions that decide short-handed games. That margin — not any shooting gap — is the story of the night: a 41-year-old can still bend a defence from the middle of it, but he cannot be the entire back line of one, and the Pistons treated every miss as a second chance to extend a lead they never surrendered.
Detroit’s depth chart won this game: Robinson, Jenkins, Collins and Reed
If James was Philadelphia’s emergency answer, Detroit’s was a depth chart doing exactly what it was built to do. Duncan Robinson scored 21 points with five three-pointers — five of Detroit’s 14 made threes on the night. Daniss Jenkins, starting in place of Thompson, added 18 points, eight rebounds and six assists. John Collins scored 16 points with 11 rebounds, and Paul Reed, starting for Duren, finished with eight points, eight rebounds and three blocks.
Two nights earlier, the same next men up had carried Detroit through a very different kind of win — the Pistons beat Heat in a game shaped by injuries on Friday, when Duren and Thompson were the ones leaving early. On Sunday it was Robinson who landed the decisive blows: after Philadelphia had scored the first six points of the fourth quarter to pull within four, his back-to-back three-pointers restored a 10-point cushion and drained the building’s last real surge of its threat.
Tyrese Maxey’s 29 points and a comeback that ran out of answers
Tyrese Maxey did everything a lead guard can do in a losing cause. He led Philadelphia with 29 points, 18 of them in the fourth quarter, dragging the Sixers back within four in the final period almost by himself. But Jaylen Brown scored 16 points on 5-of-20 shooting, the Sixers never led at any point in the game, and every Philadelphia run eventually ran into a Robinson three or a Detroit offensive rebound.
The contrast with earlier in the week was sharp. The 76ers rally from 29 down to beat the Cavaliers in LeBron James' home debut had announced Philadelphia as the East’s great escape artists; on Sunday the early hole came with the entire frontcourt in street clothes, and this time there was no way back out of it.
Why this matters: Detroit’s depth is a contender signal, and Philadelphia’s Embiid problem has no understudy
Start with what Detroit proved. Winning wire to wire on the road, against a fellow unbeaten, without two starters — including a starting center who will miss at least two weeks — is what separates a fun young team from a real contender. The Pistons’ offseason bets on veteran shooting, Robinson and Collins above all, paid out in exactly the kind of game they were signed for: one where absences in the young core had to be covered by spacing, steadiness and second-chance muscle.
Philadelphia’s night showed the flip side. When Embiid sits, the Sixers have no functional center rotation, and asking a 41-year-old to play the five is both a tribute to James and an indictment of the roster construction around him. Critics will note that this is the second straight season in which the franchise’s ceiling has been set by Embiid’s availability calendar — and on the evidence of Sunday, the calendar is already winning.
The numbers make the same point without rhetoric. A 54-37 rebounding edge and 24 second-chance points in a 13-point win means Detroit effectively won the game on possessions Philadelphia conceded. Wire-to-wire wins against quality opponents are the rarest early-season signal there is; the Pistons now own one, on the road, short-handed.
What happens next: Duren’s two weeks, the Knicks on Tuesday, and the Embiid calendar
Detroit closes its three-game road trip on Tuesday at the New York Knicks, who are 0-3 after the Magic beat the Knicks as the defending champions fall to 0-3 on Sunday. The Pistons’ next two weeks without Duren are the real test of the story Sunday told: whether Reed and Collins can hold the center spot against the East’s bigger frontcourts, night after night, rather than in one inspired performance.
For Philadelphia, the questions all run through the training room: how Embiid’s load management will be handled on back-to-backs, how quickly Edgecombe’s abdominal contusion heals, and whether the LeBron-at-center card James described on Sunday stays an emergency option or becomes a recurring one. The 76ers are 3-1 and dangerous at full strength. The problem is how rarely full strength is available.
Sources: Reuters / Field Level Media, "Cade Cunningham, Pistons blow past 76ers in battle of unbeatens," Oct. 26, 2026 (https://www.reuters.com/sports/basketball/cade-cunningham-pistons-blow-past-76ers-battle-unbeatens--flm-2026-10-26/); Associated Press via theScore, "Cunningham leads way as unbeaten Pistons deal 76ers 1st defeat," Oct. 26, 2026 (https://www.thescore.com/nba/news/3635261/cunningham-leads-way-as-unbeaten-pistons-deal-76-ers-1-st-defeat); Detroit Free Press, "Banged-up Pistons look real good again in wire-to-wire win vs 76ers," Oct. 25, 2026 (https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2026/10/25/detroit-pistons-game-today-76ers-nba/92436503007/); USA Today / Sixers Wire, "Player grades: LeBron James returns, but Sixers fall to Pistons," Oct. 25, 2026 (https://sixerswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/sixers/2026/10/25/player-grades-lebron-james-returns-but-sixers-fall-to-pistons/92437836007/).