In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, a fan-written post went live at the great Sacramento Kings blog Sactown Royalty with a simple, matter-of-fact headline: "Cleveland knows how to tank." Given the stinkbomb the Cleveland Cavaliers unleashed against the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday night, recapped above thanks to our friends at the Yahoo! Sports Minute , it's not an unreasonable conclusion. The Cavs found themselves on the receiving end of a 116-77 drubbing by the Detroit Pistons — the 23-38 Detroit Pistons — that was almost shockingly easy for the home team at the Palace at Auburn Hills. Detroit had an 11-point lead after the first quarter, a 23-point advantage at the half and, following a 39-12 third-quarter blitz, took a stunning 100-50 lead into the final 12 minutes. Every member of Detroit's starting five had a plus-minus mark of at least +36 on the night; no Cavs starter fared better than Omri Casspi's -38. The only Piston who didn't score was Ben Wallace, which makes sense, because I'm pretty sure he hasn't scored since snap bracelets were a thing. Pistons coach Lawrence Frank called it one of those "crazy nights" where "everything you shoot goes in [and] everything they shoot doesn't." That kind of undersells it — Detroit averages 101.4 points per 100 possessions on the season but scored at a 130-per-100 clip on Tuesday, while Cleveland (101.2-per-100 for the year) put up a way-sub-Bobcats number of 86.3-per-100 in the loss. On one hand, this kind of thing can happen when a team is missing its two best players (the injured Kyrie Irving and Anderson Varejao) and two more rotation pieces (the injured Daniel Gibson and Alonzo Gee), is playing on the road against a better-than-you-think opponent (Detroit's 12-14 since the All-Star break, 16-14 at home on the season and 19-18 since its dreadful 4-20 start), and is one of the league's five worst squads anyway. On the other ... yikes all around.
More...
More...
