One game. One answer. The Cleveland Cavaliers dismantled the Detroit Pistons 125-94 in a Game 7 in Detroit — on the road, in a building that had beaten them twice in this series — and are going to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2018. Mitchell led with 26 points, 8 assists, and 7 rebounds. Jarrett Allen had 23. Evan Mobley had 21. Sam Merrill came off the bench for 23 points. Cleveland became the fourth team since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976-77 to have four 20-plus point scorers in a Game 7, a collective statement from a team that had been written off as individually insufficient, individually unclutch, and individually too dependent on Donovan Mitchell to survive in the postseason. On Sunday they shared everything. The Pistons, the East's top seed, are eliminated in the second round. The Cavaliers will face the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday.

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Cleveland Cavaliers 125, Detroit Pistons 94

The pattern of this series — seven games, seven home wins, the road team seemingly incapable of sustaining the momentum that had won them individual games — broke in the most definitive fashion possible on Sunday. Cleveland came to Little Caesars Arena and won by 31. They led by 17 at halftime, 26 after three quarters, and had their starters removed for the final eight minutes before the crowd began emptying toward the exits. The pattern did not just break. It was dismantled.

Cleveland controlled from the first possession. Mitchell attacked downhill in the first quarter, drawing fouls and finding cutters off pick-and-roll actions that Detroit's switching defense — which had been so suffocating at home in Games 1 and 2 — couldn't contain. A 10-0 run midway through the second quarter, capped by back-to-back Harden threes, pushed the lead to 15 and gave Cleveland the kind of halftime cushion — 64-47 — that the Pistons simply could not overcome against a team playing with this kind of collective confidence. When Detroit mounted their expected third-quarter run — cutting it briefly before Mitchell and Allen went on a scoring burst that pushed the lead back to 26 — the building knew it was over. The fourth quarter began 99-73. It ended 125-94. Cunningham never found his footing. The home team could not produce what the moment required.

Mitchell's 26 points came with 8 assists and 7 rebounds — his first Game 7 triple-double proximity since 2020 — and the performance of a player who had been questioned all series for his off-nights in elimination games. He had 16 points in the first half. He was calm, decisive, and operating in a different register from the version of Mitchell who shot 1-of-8 in the first half of Game 5 and called himself out at halftime. Allen's 23 points were the product of a player who had been inconsistent in the series — foul trouble limiting him in Games 1 and 2, quiet in Game 6 — arriving fully in the game that mattered most. He dunked, he finished off lobs, he attacked Duren's weaknesses relentlessly and was on the floor for Cleveland's decisive second-quarter run. Mobley's 21 — with 8 rebounds and 4 blocks — was the two-way performance that Atkinson pointed to after the game as the architectural reason Cleveland won this series. He blocked everything Detroit tried to do in the paint in the first half and converted at the other end with a precision that made Detroit's defense look unable to cope. Merrill's 23 off the bench — five threes, going ice cold on his first two attempts and then burying five in a row — was the performance that separates this team from the teams that have tried to beat Cleveland in Game 7s for the past eight years and failed.

Detroit had every structural advantage Sunday: home court, a crowd that had spent three weeks building toward this moment, the sixth consecutive season in which their home play-off record had been dominant. None of it materialized. Cunningham finished with 18 points — below the level he has operated at all postseason — and committed four first-half turnovers against Cleveland's pressure. Harris had 15. Jenkins 14. Duren 10. The players who had shown up in Games 1, 2, and 6 didn't find their best versions on the night they needed it most. The Pistons exited the 2025 NBA Playoffs in the first round and they exit the 2026 NBA Playoffs in the second round. The questions that follow them into the offseason — about depth, about shooting, about whether Cunningham's individual excellence can carry a roster that goes quiet collectively in elimination moments — will be substantial. The 1-seed lost in the second round to the 4-seed. That is the full sentence.

Cleveland will face New York in the Eastern Conference Finals beginning Tuesday. Cleveland is 6-1 in Game 7s all time. The sixth win, Sunday, was their most comprehensive.

CLE 125 · DET 94

The second round is complete. The conference finals are set: New York faces Cleveland in the East, San Antonio faces Oklahoma City in the West. Four of the most compelling basketball teams in the league — defined by youth, depth, superstar play, and organizational identity — meeting in series that will determine who goes to the NBA Finals.

What the second round produced, taken as a whole, is a clarifying picture of where the league's power actually sits. New York swept Philadelphia and never played a close game after Game 2. Oklahoma City swept the Lakers with the building of the most complete depth in the league. San Antonio eliminated Minnesota behind the most physically dominant young player the sport has seen — Wembanyama posting historically rare performances in back-to-back-to-back games — and a guard duo in Castle and Fox that made the Wolves defense look unsolvable. And Cleveland went into Detroit on a Sunday afternoon and blew the door off a building that had hosted one of the series' most intense home-court advantages.

The second round's defining theme was that the teams with more — more depth, more star power, more collective coherence in the highest-pressure moments — won. Philadelphia's ceiling without Embiid hit its limit against New York's structure. Minnesota's interior supporting cast could not match San Antonio's guard creation and Wembanyama's physical dominance. The Lakers' roster, admirable throughout, ran out of margin against the defending champions. And Detroit, for all of Cunningham's individual brilliance, found that individual brilliance was not sufficient in the moments when the game demanded five players all performing at once.

Now the conference finals begin. Two first-time matchups at this stage. Knicks versus Cavaliers for the first time since 2021, when Cleveland was young and New York was not yet built. Spurs versus Thunder for the first time in franchise history at the conference finals level. Each matchup takes place every other day beginning tomorrow. The conference finals are here.

Stud of the Day: Cleveland Cavaliers (team) — Four 20-point scorers in a road Game 7. The fourth team in the post-merger era to do it. Mitchell's 26. Allen's 23. Merrill's 23 off the bench. Mobley's 21 with 4 blocks. A 17-point halftime lead that became a 26-point third-quarter lead and a 31-point final margin in Little Caesars Arena. This was the most collectively complete performance any team delivered in the second round. They shared the game equally and it produced a blowout in a building where no road team had won all series.

Dud of the Night: Detroit Pistons (team) — The East's 1-seed exits in the second round for the third consecutive year as a team expected to go further. Cunningham's postseason — the franchise record 45 points in Game 5, the triple-double production across seven games, the leadership every time his team needed it — was as good as any individual first-round-to-second-round run any player has produced in recent memory. The supporting cast around him, in the games that mattered most, was not good enough. That is the honest postseason verdict on this roster configuration. Cunningham deserves better. The offseason will force that conversation.