Niyo: Energetic Pistons hold off Cavaliers' late charge in Game 1

Detroit — They’d had the lead almost all night.

And for much of Tuesday’s playoff series opener against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Pistons looked like the team we’d seen throughout the regular season. Forceful and energetic, confident and comfortable.

But then their opponent started to as well, and before you knew it, a double-digit lead had vanished the way they often do in the NBA postseason. An 11-0 fourth-quarter run from the Cavaliers tied the score at 93-93, a rollicking home crowd fell into an awkward silence, and just like that, a night’s good work was in danger of going bad.

Yet it didn’t, and it was Jalen Duren who made sure of that in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, as the Pistons held on for a 111-101 victory Tuesday at Little Caesars Arena.

Detroit’s All-Star center, who’d shouldered much of the blame — too much, frankly — as the Pistons stumbled to the brink of elimination against Orlando in the first round stood, played an outsized role in pushing back the Cavaliers late charge Tuesday.

It started with Duren’s fingertip block on a James Harden floater with 5:01 left in a tie game. Then at the other end of the floor, Cade Cunningham found him with a driving feed in the lane for a dunk to regain the lead. Duren grabbed another rebound on Cleveland’s next possession, then was on the receiving of another Cunningham assist, hammering home another emphatic dunk to force Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson to call a timeout.

The next possession? Same result. Another Duren dunk, his third in three possessions, and the rim wasn’t the only thing rattling. Eardrums were, too.

“After that, it was a little bit of an avalanche for them,” Atkinson said.

But that was really the story all night. Never mind all the tantalizing sidelights entering this series, from J.B. Bickerstaff facing the franchise that fired him two years ago to that anonymous Cavs player quote saying of Detroit, “They aren’t in our class.” More than anything, the Pistons simply were focused on not burying themselves in this series.

Not after spending the last two weeks crawling out of the hole they dug for themselves in the first round against the Magic.

The plan Tuesday night, said Ausar Thompson, was “just coming out and playing Pistons basketball. I feel like in the Orlando series, we didn’t do that.” Not until they had to, anyway.

And Tuesday night, that meant everyone needed to get into the act. Cunningham was forced to take matters into his own hands as the Pistons rallied to win three straight in the last round. So, naturally, he’d be the focal point for the Cavaliers in this series.

“Oh, for sure, he's the leader,” Atkinson said prior to Game 1. “Has the ball in his hands a lot. But listen, this team didn’t win 60 games just because of him. They have really good players surrounding him and a really good bench that's hurt us in the past.”

It presented a problem again Tuesday night, too. The Pistons led by 16 at the end of the first quarter, thanks in large part to the play of the reserve unit.

Double-digit lead

Daniss Jenkins came in to spell Cunningham midway through the quarter and immediately turned a steal into a fastbreak layup. Then he drilled a pull-up jumper on the next possession to push the lead to double digits.

After Isaiah Stewart knocked down a pair of free throws after grabbing an offensive rebound, Jenkins added another layup. And by the time Javonte Green drilled a 27-footer at the buzzer, the bench had scored 13 of Detroit’s 37 points.

They also held a 12-0 advantage in points off turnovers, and that was no small thing. Only the Lakers had a worse turnover rate than Cleveland and Detroit in the first round of the NBA playoffs, but while the Cavs continued to cough it up Tuesday, the Pistons took better care. They didn’t commit their first turnover until nearly 2 minutes into the second quarter, and Cleveland didn’t have a fastbreak point in the entire first half.

Thompson made sure of that. His chase-down block on a Keon Ellis fastbreak layup conjured up memories of Tayshaun Prince in the 2004 conference finals. And while it was Thompson, the first-team NBA All-Defense stopper, who drew the assignment of guarding Donovan Mitchell in Game 1, that also meant Cunningham would be tasked with defending Harden and his bag of tricks.

For one night, anyway, that matchup went in Detroit’s favor, because as Atkinson noted afterward, “They were stuck like glue to our ballhandlers.” The Cavs’ backcourt duo combined for 45 points, but they needed 34 shots to do it. They were limited to five three-pointers (in 17 attempts) and had 10 turnovers, seven from Harden.

And on a night where the Pistons won the rebounding battle, the possession game and shot a better percentage from 3 than a Cleveland team that often lives and dies by playing the long game, that was more than enough.

“At the end of the day, they were the more aggressive team,” Atkinson said.

Class dismissed? For one night, anyway.

john.niyo@detroitnews.com

@JohnNiyo

This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Pistons beat the Cleveland Cavs, 111-101, in semifinal opener