Following their longest road trip of the season, the Detroit Pistons face the same team they defeated on the final leg of their journey.
The Pistons host the Cavaliers on Thursday, two nights after they rallied for a 115-113 victory at Cleveland. Detroit outscored the Cavaliers by a 31-18 margin in the fourth quarter.
“Everybody has an excuse like everything else, but we can use it or we can go out there and play. That’s what I told them at halftime,” Pistons coach Dwane Casey said. “We let them shoot 60 percent in the first half and they were playing like they were playing on the playground. That was a good sign to come out (after halftime) and compete like that.”
Sixth man Derrick Rose led the charge with 24 points and seven assists for Detroit. He also scored the go-ahead basket with 26.1 seconds remaining.
“I was just happy to get the win, especially with the way we played in the first half,” Rose said. “We knew that we didn’t want to end the trip like that. From the last couple of games with how we played, we’re heading in the right direction as far as playing with urgency.”
The Pistons went 2-4 on the trip, with most of the games on the West Coast. The only other victory came against Golden State, which has the worst record in the Western Conference.
Detroit has been ravaged by injuries and found out earlier on Tuesday that star forward Blake Griffin would be out indefinitely after undergoing an arthroscopic debridement of his left knee.
The biggest positive during the trip was the play of rookie forward Sekou Doumbouya. He averaged 13.0 points and 7.0 rebounds in the first four starts of his career.
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The Cavaliers have also had their share of injuries and recently lost rookie Kevin Porter Jr. for at least the remainder of this month due to a knee ailment.
In order to exact revenge on Thursday, they’ll have to do a better job of containing Andre Drummond. The Pistons center piled up 23 points, 20 rebounds and five assists on Tuesday.
“You want to try and send him to the line, but now as you saw (Tuesday), he’s hitting — not only throughout the game, but in important moments — from the free-throw line,” said forward Kevin Love, who led Cleveland with 30 points and nine rebounds.
“So it’s really hard to keep him off the glass. He had a big double-double, even at halftime, and that was our game plan, just to send bodies at him.”
The contest on Thursday kicks off a six-game road swing for Cleveland, which will play three of the best teams in the West — both Los Angeles clubs and Denver — during its journey.
“We’re about to go on a really long road trip and that’s not the way you want to send us off,” coach John Beilein said. “Really disappointing because I thought we really played with a lot of energy, we played hard, not as smart in some areas, but we really played hard and I thought we played pretty connected as well. … Derrick Rose and Drummond and everybody made just enough plays and we didn’t.”
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