CLEVELAND (AP) -With both Richard Hamilton and Chauncey Billups struggling offensively, the Detroit Pistons couldn’t keep up with the Cavaliers.
Hamilton scored just seven points on 2-for-8 shooting and Billups finished with 13 after going 4-for-14, forcing Detroit to rely on Rasheed Wallace and Chris Webber offensively Sunday night.
“If Rip and me are having a bad night at the same time, it’s going to be tough for us to win,” Billups said. “It doesn’t happen often.”
For the second straight year, the Pistons found their lead cut to 2-1 in a playoff series against Cleveland, losing 88-82 Sunday night in the Eastern Conference finals.
They want to avoid a repeat of last year’s script, in which the Cavaliers won three straight and forced Detroit to a Game 7.
Billups didn’t think Cleveland did anything special to throw off the Pistons offensively.
“Tonight neither one of us could really get going, and it was kind of funny, we still had chances to win the game,” Billups said.
The Pistons also struggled to defend LeBron James for the first time in the series and he finished with 32 points.
With 20,000-towel twirling fans wearing wine-colored “Beat Detroit!” shirts, the Pistons tried to come back in the fourth quarter.
But Tayshaun Prince missed a wide-open 3-pointer that could have pulled Detroit within one in the closing seconds. Billups hit a few big buckets late, but it wasn’t enough.
Detroit allowed Cleveland to shoot 49 percent from the field and committed 15 turnovers.
The Pistons again won the third quarter, but this time only 20-16 after decisively outscoring Cleveland 22-13 in the third quarter of Game 2 and 21-14 in Game 1.
Despite Hamilton and Billups’ off night, they tried to lead the charge in the fourth quarter.
Billups scored seven of the Pistons’ last nine points, but his miss on a short jumper ended what could have been a momentum swing in the final minutes.
He committed five turnovers with just three assists and was 2-for-8 from beyond the arc.
Hamilton’s seven points were the second fewest in his 96 career playoff games.
“They are trying to be overaggressive with us on our pick-and-rolls and trapping me on our pin downs,” Hamilton said. “We just have to find other ways to get shots and get our bigs more involved.”
Pistons coach Flip Saunders said that Hamilton’s difficultly on offense seemed to be affecting him on the other end of the court, citing some missed assignments.
Saunders expressed some concern with getting his guards in a rhythm.
“We’re geared so much to our two guards being our leaders … we’ve got to get those guys going,” Saunders said. “Because what happens is when your guards aren’t scoring sometimes it sucks their energy out a little bit.”
Wallace led the Pistons with 16 and Webber added 15.
Despite the backcourt’s rough night, the Pistons pointed to their defense, not anything on the offensive end, as the key to taking Game 4 on Tuesday night.
“Go back to what we were doing defensively in the last couple games,” Prince said. “We’ve got to pick our energy up a notch and not let their crowd get into the basketball game at the opportune time for them.”
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