Cleveland — Cade Cunningham had to stop and correct himself in the middle of an answer early Saturday evening.
And much like his team’s ill-fated second-half comeback against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, the whiplash effect left him shaking his head in disgust.
“I mean, we did our job getting back into the game,” Cunningham said after the Pistons had rallied from a huge deficit to put themselves in position to take a commanding 3-0 series lead on Cleveland’s home court.
But then they gave it right back. Twice, really. And both times it was Cunningham who felt as if he’d thrown all their good work away with a flurry of turnovers that he initially described as “just careless.”
“I wouldn’t even say careless,” Cunningham said, stopping himself in mid-sentence after the Pistons’ 116-109 loss to the Cavaliers. “I care about it. A lot. (They were) just bad plays that could’ve given us an opportunity to win this game.”
Instead, they stood out as reminders that nothing is going to be handed to the Pistons in these playoffs. They should know that already, after Orlando had the East’s No. 1 seed on the ropes in the first round. And Pistons fans should know by now that this is what the ride is going to feel like, no matter how long it lasts this spring: Bumpy.
In that sense, Saturday’s careening effort was everything you’d expect, too.
Runaway slips away
The Pistons picked up where they left off Thursday night in Detroit, racing out to an early lead in what was a must-win game for the Cavaliers. But then Donovan Mitchell came alive, and so did the crowd at Rocket Arena, where Cleveland is now 5-0 this postseason. And by the time Detroit managed to get all four wheels back on the road, they were staring at a yawning 17-point deficit at the start of the second half.
It wasn’t as bad as that ugly Game 6 in Orlando at that point, but the way Mitchell was going — he’d finish with a game-high 35 points and 10 rebounds — and the way the Pistons were shooting, missing 13 straight 3-point attempts over a 2 1/2-quarter span, it felt like a runaway waiting to happen. Only it didn’t.
“I mean, nothing shakes our confidence,” the Pistons’ Ausar Thompson said.
So here they came, ratcheting up the defensive intensity to fuel an 18-2 run that gave Detroit the lead, 76-74, on Paul Reed’s putback dunk with 2:28 left in the third quarter. But there it went, as Cunningham — clearly fatigued with substitutions waiting to check in at the scorer’s table — fumbled a transition pass out of bounds trying to feed Reed for another layup. And then, after Max Strus tied it at the other end, here was something you don’t often see: Cunningham threw the inbound pass off the basket stanchion. Soon after, the Cavs’ lead had ballooned back to 7 and the Pistons had given themselves more work to do.
They did it, eventually, with Reed providing the spark on a day Jalen Duren, the Pistons’ All-Star center, struggled once again, finishing with just 11 points, four rebounds and three turnovers in 29 minutes. And after Duncan Robinson’s 3-pointer knotted the score at 104 with 3:14 left, it felt like the Pistons were poised to take control.
Turnover trouble
But that’s when Cunningham inexplicably lost it. Another inbounds pass went awry — this one snatched out of mid-air by Strus just after it left Cunningham’s hands — and led to an easy breakaway layup. On the next possession, the Cavs aggressively defended a pick-and-roll and Cunningham’s looping pass for Duren was snared instead by Jarrett Allen. And the next? Cunningham charged into the lane a bit out of control and sent a pass to the wing that was well out of Tobias Harris’ reach.
Three turnovers in 42 seconds? That just can’t happen in the playoffs, and Cunningham, who was coming off another signature close-out of the Cavs in Game 2, knew it. So did his coach, who looked at the final stat sheet and saw the damage the Pistons had done to themselves with 16 turnovers that led to 27 points for Cleveland.
“That’s too many turnovers for us as a group,” he said.
And it was particularly glaring on a day the Pistons rebounded more than 40% of their own misses and actually attempted 17 more field goals than the Cavaliers.
“It’s really hard to win in this league with that disparity, so I’d just say that’s a little lucky on our part,” said Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson, whose team was beaten 17-5 on the offensive glass. “It’s not sustainable.”
Therein lies part of the problem for these Pistons, though. When they get an edge, they struggle to sustain it, in large part because they have such a tough time generating consistent half-court offense. Saturday, they scored less than a point per possession (0.89) outside of transition opportunities, and as a result, Bickerstaff’s substitutions can start to feel a bit desperate, at times.
He can hardly afford to have Cunningham sit at all in these playoffs, it seems. And Saturday it was even more alarming, as Daniss Jenkins was a minus-28 in his 18 minutes and the Pistons’ defensive rating fell off a cliff when their All-NBA leader was either sitting due to first-half foul trouble or simply trying to catch his breath on the bench.
But Bickerstaff’s offense-for-defense moves involving Robinson and Thompson in the closing minutes mostly backfired too. Particularly near the end when James Harden crossed up Robinson and blew past him for a floater that made it 110-106 with 59 seconds left.
Bickerstaff also found something with Paul Reed in those third- and fourth-quarter stints, yet it was Duren who finished the game. And when I asked him if he’d considered sticking with Reed at the end, he sounded like he had.
“I mean, you always have those thoughts about what you want to do,” Bickerstaff said. “But I think JD has done a great job for us all year long. P-Reed obviously provides a spark for us. But again, we went back to JD.”
Again, that’s not the reason the Pistons lost this one. But in a game of tradeoffs, when you give more than you get, this is often what you’re left with in the end.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
@JohnNiyo
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Niyo: Detroit Pistons gave Cavaliers a gift they didn’t need in Game 3
Reporting by John Niyo, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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