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Welcome to first take, Stephen A. Smith, Brian Windhorst, Sham Shrani, and Courtney Cronin with you on a Thursday. Day one of the men's NCAA tournament is here. We're going to get into the brackets, the upsets, the final four hopefuls in just a little bit. But we start with some breaking news, Shams, in the NBA. What more can you tell us? Courtney, sources tell me that Detroit Piston star, Cade Cunningham, has been diagnosed with a collapsed lung.

He's expected to miss an extended period of time for the Pistons.

And there is some optimism internally within the Pistons that he's going to be able to come back for the playoffs.

But still not sure about next steps, Cade Cunningham, the Pistons medical staff, they still have to continue to evaluate him, figure about next steps, Kate Cunningham, the Pistons Medical Staff.

They still have to continue to evaluate him, figure out next steps, treatment plans for him.

And the one thing I did find out in the last few minutes, doctors do believe it's a mild case.

So they're going to continue here to figure out how soon or how much time he could miss.

C.J. McCollum has had a collapsed lung on two different occasions. He missed three weeks once, six weeks, another time. So it's going to be at least a period of weeks here. But this is someone that obviously has led the Pistons to the number one seed, the three and a half game lead they have on the Boston Celtics right now. He's one of the highest usage rating players in the NBA.

So this guy that's emerged as a superstar player, now the Pistons face,

potentially being without him for a significant period of time here.

Well, first of all, you know, first things first, wishing him nothing but the best

and a full and healthy recovery. That's the priority right now. Obviously, anytime you hear something like that, it scares the living hell out of you, making sure you're right. You're thinking about a collapsed lung. You're of the mindset. What happened? What kind of collision took place? What kind of impact took place that actually, you know, caused that to happen? Then you saw some of the highlights and you see how it could have easily happened. So, you know, thank God it's not something more serious than that, but obviously that's not, that's unfortunate.

But Lord knows it could have been worse, so we're happy about that and we're happy that he's projected to be back.

Having said all of that, you know, strictly getting strictly the basketball, I definitely

think this compromises the pistons. They're not a team that's perceived as having a bona fide,

you know, a viable secondary scoring option. He is the offense. Everything goes through him.

Other people are going to have to step up, no doubt about that. You don't expect them to fall off a cliff,

but the Boston Celtics are ascending. The Boston Celtics are coming. The New York Dix are still in the mix. And obviously,

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