http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/trueblu ... 00321.htmlNo Madness
Given the recent history of the Pistons-Cavaliers series, a Detroit win at Cleveland would have overshadowed Northern Iowa over Kansas as the weekend’s biggest upset. But they can rest easy in Cedar Falls : The spotlight remains theirs; there was no madness in Cleveland ’s March air Sunday night. The Cavs completed the season sweep of the Pistons, beating them for the third time in 16 days and fourth this year after sweeping them out of last year’s playoffs, with a 104-79 win that saw the Pistons – briefly healthy en masse for Friday’s game at Indiana – again forced to alter their active list when Ben Wallace, after reaggravating his knee injury against the Pacers, couldn’t go against Cleveland. Cleveland, continuing the Pistons’ recent trend of sputtering road starts, stretched its lead to 19 points by the midpoint of the third quarter, but the Pistons cut it to 12 by halftime and eight early in the third quarter before the Cavs again turned it up a notch on a night LeBron James never had to extend himself, finishing with 15 points, three boards and seven assists in 31 quiet minutes, taking only nine shots and getting to the foul line only three times. “We’re at a point right now where we don’t want to take any steps backward heading into the playoffs,” James said. “We’re playing some great basketball right now and we want to finish the season the right way.”
It was the Pistons’ ninth straight road loss and allowed Cleveland to get its first season sweep of Detroit in 30 years. “Every game is a challenge for us,” John Kuester said after the Pistons had lost their fifth straight. “That’s one thing we understand. Every opponent we play is a team we’ve got to be ready and locked in to play 48 minutes, regardless of what their record is. We’re trying to get better. Even in that first half, we were there but we didn’t have the type of effort we had in the last half of that (Friday) Indiana game and we have to have that consistently. We can’t just be going out there.” Maybe the most notable thing about a game that played out to expectations – Cleveland, the runaway leader for the East’s No. 1 playoff seed with a 56-15 record and a six-game cushion over Orlando in the loss column – was Kuester continuing the trend he began to start Friday’s second half. DaJuan Summers is getting his chance at playing time over Austin Daye as Tayshaun Prince’s backup small forward. Daye played just 1:43 of Friday’s game, getting a quick hook for an apparent defensive lapse, and Summers seized the opportunity presented him by hitting 4 of 7 shots, including a 3-pointer, in scoring 12 points to go with four rebounds in 16 minutes. And Daye didn’t get off the bench Sunday night until garbage time, Summers coming on for Prince in each half. Summers had eight points and two rebounds in 19 minutes, while Daye went scoreless while playing the final five minutes at shooting guard.
There isn’t a lot to read into that, other than Kuester backing up what he’s said all along: Summers, despite getting comparatively few chances to play in games, has been doing things in practice that fill the front office and coaching staffs with confidence his future is as bright as Daye or Jonas Jerebko’s. Rodney Stuckey’s return to Cleveland wasn’t as smashing as his return to the lineup on Friday, when he scored 25 points in 27 minutes. The Indiana game was his first since his March 5 collapse in Cleveland . This time around, Stuckey was held to four points and four assists in 24 minutes – but at least he left the arena upright and accompanied the team back to Detroit , a far better outcome than leaving via stretcher and spending the night in a Cleveland hospital while his teammates sweated word of his condition. His backcourt mate, Rip Hamilton, had perhaps the most forgettable weekend of his NBA career – and certainly of his Pistons career. After going scoreless, shooting 0 for 3 in 19 minutes at Indiana, Hamilton was again ineffective at Cleveland . He was 1 of 8 and finished with six points in 19 minutes again.
