Well that didn’t last long!

I go to a lot of games as a fan who lives relatively close (40 minutes) to the arena. Tonight was my 8th game of the season, a real slow burner that felt worse than it actually was. Heck, coming back from being down about 30 points and taking it to within 10 is as good of a moral victory as you can have in a season full of them.

Yes, Detroit lost to Cleveland tonight at a final score of 110 to 100. How did Cleveland win? Well, they won in the way Detroit beat Chicago the game previous: off the 3PT shot. Darius Garland in particular was insane in the first half, and went on to shoot 66% from 3 overall, with 8 makes from beyond the long line. In total, Cleveland was 44% from 3 with 18 makes on 41 attempts. Not that great, but compare that to Detroit who was 10/36 (28% to you and I), with only Beef Stew and Ausar Thompson incredibly enough making anything above 33% at 57% and 66% respectively.

The offense was a bit stagnant in the first half, with the first unit and bench unit struggling at times to work around Cleveland’s size advantage. Unsurprisingly the infamous all-bench unit was ugly to watch, with Fournier and Flynn seemingly forgetting that Grimes and Fontecchio were on the floor at times, as well as those characteristic long dead streaks without buckets to match the other team’s.

From the second half onward it was getting more positive as Ivey was put out and staggered with Cade, spending more time with the bench and helping smooth the transition. Defense also stepped up an awful lot, forcing difficult shots and turnovers instead of insanely frustrating defensive lapses leading to wide-open 3PT shots and makes.

Real annoyances for me on site were what I and many fans saw as inconsistencies in fouls on drives and fouls on the floor (shocker!), as well as the extremely slow start of Quentin Grimes and Simone Fontecchio. Grimes finished with 2 points and while his defensive prowess is always felt, he needs to be more consistent and sink some shots sooner into games I’m getting Vietnam flashbacks of Killian Hayes. Fontecchio finished with 7 pts on 2/8 shooting, struggling to get the ball in his hands and often taking difficult shots late in the clock when he did get it. Tek’s turnovers were a bit frustrating at times, coughing up 3 momentum killers in transition off steals.

Overall it was a one step forward, two steps back kind of game in a few ways beyond Cade’s consistency post-all star break. Tonight was probably the worst he looked and he still had 21 pts and was one of 3 Piston players to post a positive +/- on the night. Also, Ivey had a fairly solid game compared to his recent string of performances, but he managed to foul out on a bad set of fouls in crunch time when the Pistons really could have used him. The 3PT shot wasn’t working for him or any Piston tonight, so hopefully it’s a hangover from the Season Ticket Holder Meet the Team event held at the Livonia Dave & Busters on the 29th.

Best thing to think about going forward is that Darius Garland won’t be going Super Saiyan every night (someone else seems to on a nightly basis against this team, ffs). Hopefully a bounce-back revenge game against Orlando is on the cards for Sunday night, and then hopefully the Thursday night game against Brooklyn is a domination because I’ll be in attendance that night as well.

Over 8 games I’ve seen in-person this year my W/L record is 2-6 in case you were wondering.