Are the Cavs physically strong enough to win an NBA title?

Are the Cavs physically strong enough to win an NBA title? Sunday night in Detroit, the answer was a resounding, entertaining and a highly unforgettable YES! Play on, gentlemen! The Detroit Pistons have been excused for the remainder of these playoffs, compliments of Kenny Atkinson and Company. The Cavs saw to that Sunday with a spectacular tour-de-force on how to bring an otherwise decent opponent to its knees. That's what the Cavs did Sunday, in their overwhelming humiliation of the Detroit Pistons, whom the Cavs sent into the offseason. Final score: Cavs 125, Pistons 94 ... and it wasn't that close. In fact, it was never close. Pick any time during the four quarters, and chances are the score wasn't close at all. It wasn't even close when it felt like it might be close, but it actually wasn't. The Cavs made sure of that, and then after they did, they took no prisoners, and then did it again. In fact, for the Cavs, this wasn't a game, this was recess. At no point during the evening did the Pistons play like they actually thought they could beat the Cavs. And the Pistons were right. They couldn't. Not even close. Does the phrase, "back to the drawing board" ring a bell? That's what Detroit coach J.B. Bickerstaff was facing. The hoops powerhouse that the Pistons thought they had was fools gold instead. Because Cavs 125, Pistons 94 was barely even a game. It looked more like recess. For the Cavs, the game was basically just a shoot-around. Then the Cavs took the floor to start the game, and they quickly finished it. Former Cavs coach Bickerstaff could do nothing but watch his hoopsters look more like whoops-sters. Every Cavs player who played, played better than every Pistons player who played, and the 25 buses from Cleveland that made the trip to Michigan enjoyed the show. And make no mistake about it. It was a show. The Cavs fans showed up, and watched their favorite team turn the home team into nothing more than basketball gruel. Final score: Cavs 125, Pistons 94. If it was boxing match they would have stopped the fight. But it wasn't, so they didn't. The cocky, self-absorbed home team, plus the home team's coach and fans were quickly dissolved into a big pile of nothing, while the Cavs ran roughshod over the Pistons, who had no answer for any of it. Stan Van Gundy, who was one of the TV announcers spent most of the night remarking how inept the home team Pistons were. Indeed, the Cavs were all over the home team, right from the start, and none of the Pistons, nor any of their coaches seemed to know what to do. Well, here is something they can do: Go home! Bickerstaff, who, once upon a time was the Cavs' coach, had no answer for stopping the Cavs' hardcourt title wave, which swept over the arena and refused to leave. The Cavs were certainly not ready to leave. Not after running over, around and through the previously first-place Pistons, who were completely overwhelmed for most of the second half — much to the delight of the 25 buses from Cleveland who rolled into Michigan just in time to enjoy the rout. Did I mention the final score was 125-94? This was the kind of game, the kind of circumstance, and the kind of outcome that any team, and coach, and any owner would love to revisit on demand. As it was, the game was clearly over at halftime, and there wasn't much left to do for the Cavs players after the Cavs were through humiliating their former foes. By the start of the second half, and for most of the second half, the game wasn't a game at all. It was a basketball bloodletting that allowed the Cavs to underscore the margin that was the final difference at the end of the game. Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson will probably have trouble sleeping over the next few days, as he ponders the way his team simply stampeded the Pistons. Nobody saw 125 to 94 coming, and when it did, the Pistons and their fans had no recourse other than to put a blanket over their heads until somebody finally turned off the scoreboard. All the Cavs' regulars played, and played spectacularly. It was a clinic on how to forge a lead, how to keep the lead and how to overwhelm your opponent to the point that the opponent no longer wishes to compete. Indeed, it was an unfamiliar moment when the Cavs had whipped the Pistons so easily and so efficiently, with fully a quarter and a half left to play, that many of the Piston faithful simply left the building. This wasn't merely a Cavs victory, this was a humiliating, lopsided, uneven, taken-to-the-woodshed, all-encompassing take-no-prisoners pounding of the Pistons by the Cavs. Surely this was one of the greatest playoff road victories by any Cavs team in recent memory, with the exception of the night LeBron James almost single-handedly demolished the Warriors in the playoffs a decade ago. On Sunday, the stakes weren't an NBA title, but they were a referendum of sorts on whether this edition of Cleveland's professional basketball team has the goods — physically, mentally and particularly emotionally — to seriously compete with a Detroit team that seemingly had already passed all those critical and controversial check points. What was at stake Sunday night in Detroit was the question of whether the Cavs, from strictly a physical standpoint, could legitimately stand up to and compete with Detroit's steamroller version of hoops. Could Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson's version of Basketball 101 successfully transfer enough muscle, heart and good old-fashioned strategy into the mix, in order to derail, or at least confound, Detroit coach J.B. Bickerstaff's version of hoops, which tends to lean more toward, well, let's just throw it out there: football. That is what was at stake Sunday night in Detroit, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals: Could the Cavs play enough bully ball in order to beat the bully? Going into Game 7 it seemed fairly obvious that, from a physical standpoint, the Cavs were in no position to out-physical the mountainous muscle the Pistons can throw at their opponents. But then that's exactly what they did. Contact Jim Ingraham at (440) 329-7135 or jingraham4@gmail.com.