Coming back from a 3-0 deficit might not be impossible, but it’s never been done in an NBA playoff series. So, who knows? Maybe it is impossible. The Pistons vow to try. It would certainly help their case if the Cleveland Cavaliers would, you know, stop being nearly perfect.
“At the end of the day, it’s kind of just bad luck – the timing of them playing probably their best basketball since they’ve been together,” Anthony Tolliver said Saturday with the Pistons down to their last shot to extend the series past the minimum four games. “That just kind of stinks for us.”
“I honestly feel like we’ve gotten them at their best for the whole series and for much of it we’ve stayed competitive,” Stan Van Gundy said. “When you’re in games like we’ve been in Game 1 and Game 3, a game comes down to four, five, six plays. And we haven’t been able to make those and they have. Whether it’s an open three that they make and we miss, whatever it is.”
Case in point: J.R. Smith, on Cleveland’s possession after the Pistons pulled within two points with 3:56 remaining, drained a 3-point shot. A half-minute later, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope got virtually the same shot – open for a corner triple – and saw it rim out.
Cleveland has had three straight games where its three All-Stars – LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love – have all scored 20 or more points. The Cavs have rarely had all three players producing at those levels in their two seasons as teammates, never mind with this degree of consistency. And then Smith, Iman Shumpert, Tristan Thompson, Matthew Dellavedova and Richard Jefferson have all made contributions to Cleveland wins.
Boil the series down to its most basic elements, here’s what you have: Cleveland has taken its greatest strengths – star power and 3-point shooting – and amplified them over three games while taking the Pistons’ greatest strength – offensive rebounding – and muting it beyond anyone’s expectations.
The Cavaliers are averaging 34 3-point attempts per game and shooting 43.1 percent from the arc. Both figures would have led the NBA for the regular season, ahead of even Golden State’s prolific bombs-away bunch.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Pistons – No. 2 in offensive rebounding during the season and the only NBA team to rank in the top five in both offensive and defensive rebounding percentage – are 15th of 16 playoff teams in offensive rebounding, 14th in overall rebounding and 13th in rebound percentage.
Those two areas – 3-point shooting and rebounding – stood out to Van Gundy in Game 3 and for the series.
“They’ve shot at a very high percentage and made a lot,” he said. “We got their attempts down a little bit last night, but they still shot it very well. And we’re shooting 25 percent from three in the last two games. That’s been a huge difference. And then the rebounding’s been a difference. That was an area going in we should have had an advantage and we’ve only outrebounded them once and that game only by three. Last night we got dominated on the boards.
“I thought we did a lot of things well last night. We did a lot better than we had been doing. But we just did not rebound the ball and we didn’t make open shots.”