Cleveland has three acknowledged superstars. When all three show up, it’s trouble more often than not. And Friday was one of those nights.
“When they’re scoring like that, they’re unbeatable,” Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said after LeBron James, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving combined for 77 of Cleveland’s 114-points in an eight-point win at The Palace. “You can’t have all three of ’em scoring in double figures like that. They’re going to be hard to beat.”
Love scored 19 of his 29 points in the first half, Irving 16 of his 28. With his two sidekicks scoring early and often – and with great efficiency, Love hitting 5 of 7 triples for the game, Irving’s 28 points coming on 19 shots – it gives LeBron James the great luxury of going into facilitator mode. That means he’s not bearing the physical burden of having to score in a series of one-on-one situations. James took just 16 shots and finished with 20 points, nine boards and eight assists.
“They’re both great players and it makes it tough,” Andre Drummond said of Love and Irving’s scoring. “Kevin Love is able to do a little bit of everything. He’s a tough guard. And Kyrie can get it going at a given time. Tonight was his night.”
The Cavs got such great scoring across the board only after they were essentially staked to a lead via two areas that usually are the domain of the Pistons, who aren’t often outrebounded and don’t usually send their opponent to the free-throw line on an endless loop. It’s not like Cleveland doesn’t know how to play in pressure situations, but all those easy points early put them in a comfort zone that the Pistons could never alter.
Cleveland scored 10 second-chance points in the first quarter, after which it led 33-27, and shot 21 free throws in the first half alone. The Pistons, who average 19 fouls a game, had 18 with 18 minutes still to play and finished with 24. It didn’t help that the Cavs hit 27 of 29 at the line, either.
“The things I thought hurt us were 29 free-throw attempts, something we don’t normally do, and 17 second-chance points, which we don’t normally give up,” Stan Van Gundy said. “They played great offensively. When you’re playing really talented teams, it’s going to be difficult, so you can’t not get back in transition; you can’t foul and send them to the line and give them free points; and you can’t give them second-chance points. We did all those things.”
“When you’re shooting free throws the entire game, it’s going to make the game a lot easier for you and you’re going to play a lot more comfortable and free,” Drummond said. “We didn’t make it tough for them.”
The Pistons scored plenty, trailing by eight at halftime despite scoring 58 points even though they’d made only 3 of 12 from the 3-point line, had three quarters of 27 or more points and even scored 20 in the other quarter, the third. But they could never gain any traction defensively until the fourth quarter, when they cut a deficit that had grown to 20 by late in the third quarter to nine with 4:45 to play. Van Gundy took the blame for not scheming a way to prevent Love from getting so many open looks from three when the Cavs used him in pick-and-roll action.
But even when the Pistons played good defense for 24 seconds, the Cavs early got too many long rebounds to extend possessions and later they made too many tough shots.
“I think they had four shots right at the end of the shot clock – we had one,” Van Gundy said. “We made a great effort after going for a loose ball and Kevin Love hits a three. J.R. (Smith) hit one in the deep corner. They played really, really well. So it’s not all on us. They were terrific. How are you going to beat a team playing that well? Well, you can’t give them those other things. You can’t give them second chances, can’t give them free points at the free-throw line, you’ve got to take away what you can take away – and we didn’t.”
The Pistons go from the frying pan to the fire, flying to Toronto after Friday’s loss for a Saturday date with the team on Cleveland’s heels in the East, Toronto. The Raptors are on a franchise-record 10-game winning streak and were off Friday. And the Pistons are 0-5 this season in road games when playing the second half of a back to back.
“We’ve got to get our mindset,” Caldwell-Pope said. “We’ve got to be prepared. We know how we’ve been playing on back to backs, so we’ve got to be prepared to come out with great energy and defend for the first thing, then just keep the intensity up the whole game.”
“We’ve just got to swallow this one and move on to the next one,” Drummond said. “We need to do a better job of coming out prepared on these back to backs. It’s not an excuse that we have a bunch of back to backs. The NBA plays back to backs, so we’ve got to do a better job of getting prepared and ready for these games.”