Game 5 is a must win
Game 5 in Detroit will be much easier to win than game 7 in Detroit
Here are a few things in our favor
Cades their only high level creator and he’s not playing well, our defense has been good on him
Jalen Duren playing awful, pistons fans absolutely dunking on their own guy. His morale has to be LOW
Mitchell might actually be out of his slump now
Harden seems to have figured out how to not turn it over on every possession
Mobley / Allen playing great all around basketball
Kenny has managed minutes almost too well so our guys aren’t gasping for air
JB hasn’t managed minutes well so his guys ARE starting to get gassed (maybe that’s why Cade, Duncan Robinson, Duren, Ausar all had rougher games recently)
Mental side of it, pistons were riding high going up 2-0 after coming back from 3-1. Had a 5 game win streak and finally felt like a 1 seed again. Now they are coming back to earth and as a very young team there back is against the wall and the noise has never been louder. Cavs already went through this and made it out alive after starting 0-2 and our guys seem to have a lot figured out.
Now let’s look at the series. Games 1 and 2 in Detroit Cavs made A TON of mistakes and still tied it up / made it close in both but lost it at the end. Despite these loses I think we can build off them and our 2-0 at home to finally take a road game.
Now we have to win game 5 so we can continue our home win streak at Cleveland for game 6. If it came to game 7 in Detroit, I think we still take it but it’s going to be a lot tougher.
Only thing that scares me is b ball Paul.
Edit to clear up the confusion from some here; my whole point is it’ll be a much tougher mental battle for us to win game 7 on the road rather than winning games 5 on the road and game 6 at home. We are a team that struggles mentally in big moments. Game 7 on the road one win away from the ECF is literally the biggest moment this core has ever had