Cade Cunningham scored 23 points and had seven assists and Tobias Harris added 20 points and eight rebounds Tuesday night to lead the Detroit Pistons to a 111-101 win over the visiting Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Duncan Robinson had 19 points and Daniss Jenkins chipped in 12 for the Pistons, who ended a 12-game playoff skid against the Cavaliers. It marked Detroit’s first Game 1 playoff victory since beating Orlando in the Eastern Conference semifinals in May 2008.
Donovan Mitchell scored 23 points and James Harden added 22, including 13 in the final quarter, to lead the Cavaliers.
Game 2 is Thursday night before the series shifts to Cleveland.
The Pistons led by 11 points during the fourth quarter before the Cavaliers answered with an 11-0 run to tie the game at 93 with 5:28 remaining. Harden sparked the surge by scoring nine points during the run. Detroit regained control by turning up the defensive pressure, leading to three straight dunks by Jalen Duren during an 18-8 closing run that sealed the victory.
“Understanding what the moment means and what’s called for and then having the poise to go out and execute it (are things we learned last series),” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “Playing in three basically elimination games you understand that. You understand how important starts are, the urgency. You understand how to close and how to finish and how to get your spots, and then you grow a belief that you can. I think that series did a lot of that for us.”
Duren posted 11 points and a game-high 12 rebounds.
Cleveland scored the game’s first five points before Detroit quickly took control in the opening quarter. After tying the game 5-5, the Pistons ramped up the defensive pressure and repeatedly attacked the paint, overwhelming the Cavaliers on both ends of the floor.
“Got to look at it,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said of his team’s turnovers. “I always look at it like it’s a team thing, always kind of starts with our spacing. I think screening is another thing. They have elite defenders, we have to get them off our ball handlers. They were stuck like glue to our ball handlers. So, got to do a better job there. And then, we got to win our spot, too — they took us off our spot, especially in the first half.”
Detroit outscored Cleveland 32-16 the rest of the quarter and turned six turnovers into 12 points while setting the tone with its physical play. For the game, the Pistons forced 19 turnovers and turned them into 31 points.
“I thought our defense was dialed in early in the game,” Harris said. We just were in the moment of getting stops, getting plays offensively, figuring out ways that we can kind of get the mismatches we want, but just playing off of our rhythm and our movement.”
Cleveland chipped away at Detroit’s lead throughout the second quarter and twice pulled within nine points, the last at 53-44, before the Pistons took a 59-46 lead into the break. Detroit committed six turnovers after having none in the opening period, but nine different Pistons scored in the first half.
Detroit pushed its lead to as large as 65-48 in the third quarter on Robinson’s 3-pointer before Cleveland mounted a late charge. The Cavaliers used a 10-2 run to trim the deficit to 77-74, fueled in part by 14 bench points in the period (10 from Max Strus alone).
But the Pistons answered with Ron Holland’s buzzer-beating 3-pointer to take an 83-76 lead into the fourth.
“I thought overall we did a good job of attacking them and figuring out who we wanted to put in the plays, and just finding our flow out there,” Harris said. “It’s like I say, teams that go to Game 7 usually relax in this type of game. We said before the game, don’t let that be our team. And so for us, it’s coming out with that type of energy, that type of fuel to keep us going.”
–Field Level Media
