Three quick observations from Thursday night’s 106-101 Pistons win over the Cavaliers at The Palace:
SLAM DUNK – In a game of wild runs, the Pistons went on a 13-0 sprint to open the fourth quarter – while LeBron James sat for less than four minutes – and they got a big fourth quarter from Reggie Jackson for the second straight home game to score a critical victory in the jumbled Eastern Conference playoff race. Jackson hit a hanging jump shot with the shot clock about to expire and 55 seconds left to give the Pistons a five-point lead as he scored 12 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter. Andre Drummond had a huge game as well, scoring eight fourth-quarter points to finish with 20 points and 16 boards as six Pistons finished in double figures. Stanley Johnson wasn’t one of them – he finished with eight points and five rebounds – but he and Reggie Bullock were part of Stan Van Gundy’s bench unit that sparked the fourth-quarter run. The Pistons began the night tied with Chicago at 31-33 and in the No. 7 playoff position but just one-half game ahead of both Miami and Milwaukee. They also came into the game just 2-9 in back to backs, while Cleveland – which hadn’t played since Monday night and was coming off consecutive losses to Miami – was 11-2 when playing with two days of rest. James scored 29 for Cleveland and Kyrie Irving added 27. The Pistons, for the second straight night, recovered from an early double-digits deficit to take the lead but saw it wiped out in a hurry over the last six minutes of the third quarter. Cleveland used a 20-2 first-half run to build a 15-point lead, but the Pistons took a three-point halftime lead by closing the second quarter 10-0 and led by 10 midway through the third quarter when Cleveland went on an 11-0 run that became a 17-1 run.
FREE THROW – Tobias Harris moved back into the starting lineup, but it remains to be seen if it was a one-game thing or something longer term. The move made sense against the Cavs for two reasons: their starting lineup without Kevin Love doesn’t employ a conventional power forward with LeBron James and Richard Jefferson, and their second unit center is perimeter-oriented shooter Channing Frye. Jon Leuer is a logical matchup for Frye and Harris for Jefferson. Harris, whose average of 16.8 points per game off the bench trails only Houston teammates Lou Williams and Eric Gordon, got off to a slow start, scoring his first points at 6:44 of the second quarter after missing his first five shots. He finished with 15 pints but hit just 5 of 18 shots. Leuer, who’d hit just 5 of 33 shots from the 3-point line over his past 14 games, didn’t score or grab a rebound in 13 minutes. Aron Baynes, who sprained his right ankle in Wednesday’s loss at Indiana, played late in the first half to protect Andre Drummond from a third foul and then entered the game midway through the third quarter. On the next three possessions, with Baynes guarding Frye, Frye hit 3-pointers to push a Cleveland run begun by a James driving layup to 11-0 and wipe out its 10-point deficit.
3-POINTER – Subtract Kyle Korver from pretty much every team’s lineup and they’d have a huge hole in their 3-point attack. Korver missed the game with a foot injury, but J.R. Smith was back for Cleveland for the first time since breaking his thumb Dec. 20. Smith played 19 minutes but shot just 1 of 8 from the 3-point line as Cleveland endured a subpar night from the arc, hitting just 11 of 39. Channing Frye did the bulk of the damage, hitting 5 of 7. But the Cavs’ roster of 3-point bombers runs a lot longer than just Korver and Smith. Even with Kevin Love still out, Cleveland came into The Palace with seven members of their rotation shooting above the league average from the 3-point arc and a total of 10 on their roster shooting better than 36 percent from deep. Cleveland shoots threes both in volume and at a high percentage. The Cavs are second to Cleveland in number of attempts per game, 33.6, and second to San Antonio in accuracy at .391. Forty percent of Cleveland’s field-goal tries are triples. They average 13.2 made triples a game compared to 7.7 for the Pistons. The Pistons only got outscored 11-9 from the 3-point arc in this one, but they shot a better percentage than Cleveland.
