{"id":637874,"date":"2026-03-04T02:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T02:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/637874\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T02:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T02:03:17","slug":"pistons-head-coach-j-b-bickerstaff-has-strong-words-for-cavs-anonymous-player-that-called-his-team-out-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/637874\/","title":{"rendered":"Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff has strong words for Cavs anonymous player that called his team out"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> had many chances to defeat the Detroit Pistons<\/a> last Friday<\/a>, even though they were without their two star guards, James Harden (thumb) and Donovan Mitchell (groin). The Cavs failed to close the game out at the free-throw line, and they couldn\u2019t hold on to a late lead in regulation.<\/p>\n

Despite the loss, there was reason for optimism after Friday\u2019s game. This led to an anonymous Cavs player telling Chris Fedor<\/a> of cleveland.com that the Pistons \u201caren\u2019t in our class<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff was asked about those comments before the two teams\u2019 rematch on Tuesday and wasn\u2019t impressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no response,\u201d Bickerstaff said about the report before providing a response.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you mean it, you don\u2019t say it anonymously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bickerstaff does have a point. Comments like a team isn\u2019t in your class don\u2019t exactly come across as strongly as they should if someone isn\u2019t willing to put their name to it.<\/p>\n

Even though the short-handed Cavs were in a position to defeat the conference leaders, they didn\u2019t on Friday. Additionally, the Pistons didn\u2019t feel like they played up to their skill level in that matchup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t play our best basketball the other night,\u201d Bickerstaff said. \u201cWe need to impose ourselves on the game a little bit more than we did last game. I thought the last two quarters of the Orlando game are the best quarters we\u2019ve played defensively since New York. I hope our guys can continue to build off that, because that\u2019s where it all starts for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a decent chance that the Cavs and Pistons meet in the playoffs. Considering that most of Detroit\u2019s coaching staff was previously with Cleveland a few seasons ago, there\u2019s plenty of familiarity. And familiarity often breeds contempt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 The Cleveland Cavaliers had many chances to defeat the Detroit Pistons last Friday, even though they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,147,305,193,3846,6,3101],"class_list":{"0":"post-637874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cavs-news","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nba-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116168451943480228","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}