Cleveland Cavaliers get destroyed at home by disappointing Pistons team 103-80

Kyrie Irving didn't play tonight. Anderson Varejao is out for a long time. The Detroit Pistons were 17 of 31 from three point range. The Cleveland Cavaliers were 5 of 21 from three point range. The Cavs turned the ball over 17 times. LeBron James shot 5 of 19 from the field and turned the ball over seven times.

The folks paid a lot of money to come and watch the Cleveland Cavaliers beat up on the previously 6-23 Detroit Pistons. That didn't happen. This is a team without much depth that will struggle to survive when they lose just a little bit of it. Tonight they were down two opening night starters and LeBron James played awful. Not sure there was much else to it. LeBron spent some time limping in the game, and came out playing well. The officiating got under his skin. He's an amazing player and has won multiple MVP's. Bad nights happen, they just seem to be happening a bit more this season.

Were there bright spots? Sort of? Tristan Thompson played as well as you can when your team gets blown out by a bad team. 18 points on 11 shots, 11 rebounds, all while doing his best to battle Andre Drummond. Drummond himself finished with 16 points, 17 rebounds and five blocks, so it wasn't perfect, but that's not where the game was decided. Kevin Love played hard but couldn't get a three pointer to go down. Sigh.

Credit to the Pistons, they trusted Stan Van Gundy's offense and hit  a high percentage of three point shots. Brandon Jennings, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Jodie Meeks led the charge, with Caron Butler even getting in on the action. The Cavs couldn't get anything going at the rim offensively, and missed a lot of open three point shots.

It'll be curious to see what David Blatt has to say following this one. He went to Brendan Haywood for a bit in the second quarter and it didn't work. He's running short on guys who can defend. At times, it seems like his offense isn't getting run. They aren't getting into the second actions off of initial picks. When Tristan sits, there's little to no defense, and Tristan isn't an all-world defender anyway. He's been good, but he's far from a gamechanger at this point.

I get the disappointment at this game. I'm upset. Let's try and be constructive in comments and not turn on one another. The Cavs will get better.