CLEVELAND – As a winter storm brewed outside Quicken Loans Arena, a perfect storm gathered inside.
Cleveland had lost four of five games going into Tuesday’s matchup, one of them to the Pistons just last week after they spotted the Cavs a 15-point first-quarter lead. So the Pistons were prepared for fury from the Cavaliers.
What they weren’t prepared for was perfection.
The Cavs made their first 10 3-point attempts and a mind-boggling 23 of their first 26 shots in a video-game approximation of an honest-to-goodness NBA game. They tied the season high for points in any quarter against the Pistons (44, the first) and half (71) and established a new season-high for points in a game in the 128-96 knockout win.
“We knew they were going to come out and be really aggressive,” Marcus Morris said. “We just beat ’em, so we knew what was going to happen. They came out, they got hot.”
Hot? Yeah, that doesn’t quite do it justice.
Cleveland drained 3-pointers to end the first, second and fourth quarters. Even if you wiped out those first 10 triples – which came from seven different shooters – the Cavs still made 9 of 20 3-pointers for the game.
The Cavs scored on 18 of 22 first-quarter possessions when they made 17 of 20 shots, all seven of their 3-point attempts and each of their three free throws. They committed just one turnover. The Pistons somehow stayed within hailing distance for a good bit, trailing just 21-16 with five minutes left in the quarter despite Cleveland hitting 9 of 10 shots and three triples to that point.
“We were OK offensively early and then that didn’t last very long,” Stan Van Gundy said. “It was just a bad night. Look, they were great; we were terrible and that’s why you get a lopsided game. At this point, there’s no sense lamenting that one. We’ve got to move on and we’ve got a big game tomorrow night.”
As demoralizing as it can be to keep turning around to see the ball go through the net and lose a big game in the heat of a playoff race, the Pistons weren’t mortally wounded by the loss. They remained in the seventh spot in the Eastern Conference pecking order, staying one game behind No. 6 Indiana with its loss at New York. Idle Milwaukee moved to within a half-game of them but faces five consecutive road games.
The Pistons host Utah, 17 games over .500 and fourth in the Western Conference race, on Wednesday and the Jazz were idle and waiting for them in Auburn Hills as the Pistons got out of Cleveland during Tuesday’s nasty weather.
Van Gundy pulled his starters after a third-quarter spurt that initially cut the deficit to 20 stalled there, so nobody played more than the 26 minutes logged by Tobias Harris, Andre Drummond and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
“That game was over,” he said. “We didn’t make any kind of run, ever, in that game. Live to fight another day.”
The Cavs played with a palpable edge before a packed house and shooting can sometimes be the byproduct of being the clear aggressor. There was some of that involved in their torrid outing, to be sure, but it’s tough to make 10 straight 3-pointers in shooting drills with no defenders present. It’s instructive that on a night the Pistons were outscored by 32 points, they held a 36-24 advantage in points in the paint.
“They played extremely well on offensive today,” Reggie Jackson said. “Even when we found good shots, we didn’t feel like the ball would go in. You’ve got games like this. It was a tough one for us, but we’ll put this behind us.”