{"id":728458,"date":"2026-05-08T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T00:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/728458\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T00:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T00:00:18","slug":"dan-gilbert-paid-for-army-of-cavs-fans-to-take-over-pistons-playoff-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/728458\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Gilbert paid for army of Cavs fans to take over Pistons playoff game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Gilbert paid for an army of Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> fans to take over Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena for Game 2 of the NBA playoffs against the rival Detroit Pistons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gilbert, the longtime Cavs owner who has founded several Detroit-based companies and owns much of the real estate in downtown Detroit, sent seven bus loads of Cavs season ticket holders up I-75 North on Thursday, May 7, to wear maroon and white shirts that read “BEAT DETROIT!”<\/p>\n

Coworkers Rick Amador, 46, of Lorain, Ohio, and Eric Karr, 24, of\u00a0Strongsville, Ohio,\u00a0said they were thankful their trip to the playoffs in Detroit was fully paid for.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Pistons vs Cavaliers score updates, Game 2 highlights, commentary<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cDan Gilbert fully paid for all of our tickets, paid for the shirts that you see here today,” Amador said. “He paid for the swag and he brought us here, fed us. We had a party at The Beacon<\/a> [in Detroit, owned by Gilbert]. DJ, food, it was phenomenal.”<\/p>\n

Gilbert earned a bachelor\u2019s degree from Michigan State<\/a> and a law degree from Wayne State in downtown Detroit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m just ready to bring a dub home to Cleveland,” Karr said. \u201cIt’s been a long time coming. \u2029We got lucky with LeBron [James] always coming here and now it’s time for us to build our own future, and, win our own championship. All of them. Yes, Donovan [Mitchell] has to have his legacy game.”<\/p>\n

The Pistons on Tuesday night won Game 1 of the best-of-seven series, 111-101<\/a>, in the Eastern Conference semifinals.<\/p>\n

Games 3-4 will be in Cleveland on Saturday afternoon and Monday night.<\/p>\n

As for a prediction for the rest of the series?<\/p>\n

“Five games, Cavs win it,” Karr said without hesitation.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dan Gilbert paid for Cavs fans to infiltrate Pistons Game 2 in Detroit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Gilbert paid for an army of Cleveland Cavaliers fans to take over Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,3846,8567,296,188,90375,90376,6],"class_list":["post-728458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-basketball","tag-cavaliers","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-clevelandcavaliers","tag-dan-gilbert","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-downtown-detroit","tag-eric-karr","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116536018470958758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728458","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=728458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}