The Cavaliers led by 29 points in the fourth quarter. But when both teams emptied their benches early in the fourth, Detroit went on a 23-4 run to come within 83-75 with less than 5 minutes to play. Detroit's run included an 8-1 spurt after LeBron James returned to the lineup in the fourth.

Trailing 2-0 in the best-of-seven series, Curry said he hopes his players can build off of the team's strong play in the fourth quarter.

"With the second group, it showed it doesn't matter what we do coverage-wise," Curry said. "If you go out, execute it and do it extremely hard, we'll be OK."

It was the kind of performance Curry has looked for from his starters, to no avail.

"We didn't come out and do the job we were assigned to do," Pistons starting forward Antonio McDyess said. "It's like they were doing anything they wanted to do on offense. We didn't give any resistance."

McDyess added, "We have to play with some type of heart. We ain't playing at all like we got any type of energy. We're just going out there, going through the motions, it seems like."

Many of the Pistons' problems with the first unit stemmed from a series of unforced mistakes, such as throwing an errant outlet pass out of bounds or not hustling down a loose ball when it bounced off a teammate.

It has added up to early deficits in Games 1 and 2, which makes an already daunting task for Detroit all that much tougher.

Detroit's problems were especially pronounced in the first quarter, when the Pistons committed seven turnovers that led to 12 points for the Cavs. Those mistakes were magnified as Detroit trailed 23-14 after the first.

However, the Pistons did a much better job of forcing Cleveland turnovers and converting them into points after that.

After getting just two points off three Cleveland turnovers in the first, Detroit's defense ratcheted it up in the next three quarters by forcing 11 turnovers that led to another 12 points.

"A lot of that was our second group guys," Curry said. "They were a lot more aggressive and covered a lot more ground."

That aggressiveness included Amir Johnson picking up a technical foul in the second quarter. After delivering a hard foul to James, Cavs forward Anderson Varejao got in Johnson's face. Johnson pushed him in the chest, which is when the officials whistled him for a technical foul.

"I tried to go for the ball," Johnson said. "I was just trying to not give him the layup. (Varejao) came in my face. I wasn't going to get punked, so I pushed him out of my face."

Johnson's play highlighted what was clearly a Pistons team that felt its defense was too soft on James and the Cavaliers in Game 1. Johnson's hard foul soon was followed by hard fouls from McDyess, Kwame Brown and guards Will Bynum and Arron Afflalo.