Cade Cunningham scored 21 points as the Detroit Pistons staved off elimination from the NBA playoffs with a 115-94 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers in their NBA Eastern Conference semifinal series on Friday.<\/p>\n
The top-seeded Pistons — trailing 3-2 in the best-of-seven series before Friday’s must-win game in Cleveland — produced a dazzling early onslaught to build a double-digit lead that proved the difference between the two sides.<\/p>\n
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Cleveland, unbeaten at their Rocket Arena home so far this postseason, will now have to win on the road in Sunday’s decisive game seven in Detroit to advance.<\/p>\n
Cunningham’s 21 points included five three-pointers, while at the defensive end, Detroit center Jalen Duren<\/a> delivered a dominant performance that included 11 rebounds, three blocks and a steal.<\/p>\n Cunningham was one of six Pistons players to finish in double figures, with Paul Reed<\/a> adding 17 off the bench, and Duren and Daniss Jenkins<\/a> scoring 15 points apiece.<\/p>\n “We’re just playing our brand of basketball, coming out competing, trying to execute our system to the best of our ability, and we’re together,” Cunningham said afterward.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n “We stick together through everything, so it’s a great win for us.”<\/p>\n James Harden<\/a> led Cleveland’s scoring with 23 points while Donovan Mitchell<\/a> was restricted to 18 points.<\/p>\n The Cavs started Friday’s game brightly, opening up a six-point lead in the first quarter before the Pistons started firing to take a grip on the contest.<\/p>\n A devastating 22-4 run by Detroit saw the visitors accelerate into a commanding 39-27 lead in the second quarter and although\u00a0Cleveland closed the gap to 54-51 at halftime, the Pistons regrouped impressively to snuff out the Cavs’ threat with a 30-19 third quarter.<\/p>\n That left Detroit leading by 14 points heading into the fourth and the result was never in doubt, with the Pistons maintaining a double-digit lead to close out victory.<\/p>\n rcw\/pnb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cade Cunningham scored 21 points as the Detroit Pistons staved off elimination from the NBA playoffs with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[88728,8174,42227,4576,13054,77944,158470,148151,355,185437,99],"class_list":["post-645926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-cade-cunningham","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-daniss-jenkins","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-gregory-shamus","tag-harden","tag-jalen-duren","tag-nba","tag-paul-reed","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}