The Detroit Pistons moved to 1-1 in the Summer League with their nine-point win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday
Just three days after losing their first Summer League matchup, the Detroit Pistons bounced back with a much stronger, more cohesive performance in their 103-94 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday. Right from the jump, the Pistons were not only finding better looks on the perimeter but made them count with Chaz Lanier leading the way in the scoring department.
In the first quarter, Lanier connected on six of his seven shot attempts and racked up 17 points as the Pistons built an eight-point lead over their Central Division rivals. As a whole, Lanier finished with 25 points (7-for-12 from three-point range), three rebounds and three assists in the narrow victory.
Much like Lanier, Detroit wing Brice Williams was locked into a shooting groove all game long, and he contributed 21 points of his own in the victory. Williams took all of his shots from downtown with six of those nine triples finding the twine. Williams also contributed four rebounds and two assists in the contest and played a vital role in Detroit’s ability to nullify Cleveland’s late charge in the fourth quarter.
“When you’re in that zone, you’re not really thinking too much,” Williams said after the game. “You’re kind of just like next shot, next time I touch this ball it’s going up, it doesn’t even matter what time. A lot of mine were, I feel like, at the end of the shot clock, so I knew they were going up before I even touched it.”
In terms of the Pistons’ star attraction in first-round pick Ebuka Okorie, the former Stanford guard faced a bit more adversity against Cleveland from a shooting perspective. Okorie had difficulty finishing drives and had trouble finding a home for his floater, but the point guard ultimately amassed 14 points, six assists and three rebounds despite the struggles he faced as a shooter.
”We played Pistons basketball,” Williams said. “We defended hard. We rebounded. We were scrappy, and that’s what kept us in the game. It took a little bit of grit. We had to play together. We had to battle through the tough times, like turning the ball over and the runs, but we played together and the team that stayed together the longest won.”
As Williams alluded to, the Pistons did struggle with ball control at times during the victory, but there were some bright spots that Detroit can hang their hat on. For second-round pick Ugonna Onyenso, the former Virginia center finally showcased his shot-blocking ability that Pistons fans have heard about up until this point. Although Onyenso was held without a block in his first Summer League game, the big man swatted five Cleveland shot attempts today, and he even connected on a wide-open three-point attempt, which is a quality that his college coach Ryan Odom said was a surprising facet of his game.
After this, the Pistons will be back in action tomorrow against the New York Knicks.
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