Kyrie Irving's dagger puts Cavs up 3-0 and Pistons on the brink

By Dan Devine 1 hour ago Ball Don't Lie

Kyrie Irving and LeBron James celebrate being one win away from Round 2. (Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

Once again, the Detroit Pistons stood toe-to-toe with the Cleveland Cavaliers, refusing to be pushed around and bullied by the defending Eastern Conference champions. Once again, though, the Cavaliers' superior stars wound up overpowering Detroit's muscle, with Kyrie Irving coming up big to turn off the lights in Motown in the final minute of Friday's Game 3. [Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
With the Cavaliers holding onto a five-point lead in the final minute, the Pistons' small-ball lineup — Marcus Morris, Tobias Harris, Stanley Johnson, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Reggie Jackson, a five-man unit to which Stan Van Gundy had turned for less than one minute of floor time during the entire 2015-16 season — turned in 23.3 seconds of excellent defense, switching around the perimeter and stringing out Cleveland's possession before deflecting a pass out of bounds with 0.7 left on the shot clock. Two problems, though: seven-tenths is still enough for time a catch-and-shoot, and the Cavs have some real shot-makers ... like, for example, No. 2:
As Matthew Dellavedova prepared to trigger the inbounds on the left side of the baseline, Irving cut from the top of the key toward the right corner. LeBron James stepped up from his spot on the block to screen Harris, who'd been tracking Irving. As LeBron cut toward the ball, both Morris, who had been tracking James, and Aron Baynes, the reserve center Van Gundy had inserted in place of Johnson to protect the front of the rim, stayed with him.
With both Kevin Love (defended by Caldwell-Pope) and J.R. Smith (checked by Jackson) stationed on the strong side of the floor, that left absolutely nobody on the weak-side, meaning the screened-off Harris was the only one with any prayer of getting out to Kyrie. Dellavedova fired the pass to the far corner; Irving caught and fired in one motion ahead of Harris' leaping closeout; bang. Cavaliers by eight, 43 seconds left.
It was a honey of an after-timeout play design by Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue, and the results left LeBron ecstatic:

LeBron James is happy pic.twitter.com/LGTMOE24VI

— gifdsports (@gifdsports) April 23, 2016

... and Van Gundy beside himself: