CLEVELAND -- Channing Frye scored zero points in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 104-81 win on Friday over the Detroit Pistons. It was unlike him, as he has had six games in double digits so far through the Cavs’ 10-2 start. He even had back-to-back games of hitting the 20-point plateau against two of the better teams in the Eastern Conference, the Charlotte Hornets and Toronto Raptors.

Yet he had a big hand, or rather a voice, in what was Cleveland’s most complete effort of the season on Friday.

“Channing asked for it before the game,” LeBron James said after the Cavs' victory. “He looked at me before the game and said we need to get a big win so we can get some rest. It’s a great point in the schedule for us right now; we don’t play ’til Wednesday. Channing asked for it, and we were able to execute our game plan. The coaching staff gave us a great one, and offensively and defensively, this is the best we’ve played all year as far as close to 48 minutes.”

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A quirk in the schedule now gives Cleveland four straight days without a game. Coming off Wednesday’s loss against the Pacers in Indianapolis, anything less than a strong performance against the Pistons would have sat with them for half a week before they could do anything about it.

So the defending champs went out and proceeded to beat the pants off the Pistons. By just about any statistical measurement, the Cavs played sublime basketball. That is, after spotting Detroit a 6-0 lead and causing coach Ty Lue to call a quick timeout just 1 minute, 37 seconds into the game.

His message?

“Beep, beep, beep, beep,” Lue said. “Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, let’s play.”

The fact that Lue said "beep" instead of the commonly used swearword replacement of "bleep" was about the only thing that went wrong for the Cavs following that 6-0 start.

J.R. Smith, left, Kyrie Irving, right, and the Cavaliers were clicking on all cylinders in their rout of the Pistons. David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images

Forty-six minutes, 23 seconds of game time later and it was Detroit coach Stan Van Gundy who sounded like he wanted to curse, seeing his team fall behind by as many as 33 points, and held to just 31.2 percent shooting and get outrebounded 52-44, despite possessing one of the best big men in the game in Andre Drummond.

“They played harder than us,” Van Gundy said. “They played better than us. They moved the ball better. They played better together. They defended better. They did everything better.”

Van Gundy was saying the Cavs did everything better in comparison to his team, but really, that’s not too surprising, considering Cleveland swept Detroit out of the first round of the playoffs in the spring -- and that was when Reggie Jackson was healthy.

The remarkable thing is that the Cavs on Friday night did everything better than they have all season. Even though Cleveland jumped out of the gates to a 9-2 record, it wasn’t dominant. Sure, the record was impressive, but there were missed open shots, unprotected leads, inconsistent defensive efforts and a general air of coasting rather than supremacy.

On Friday, everything was just “crispier” for the Cavs, to borrow a favorite Frye term. Harder closeouts. Deadeye swishes. Weakside rejections. Extra passes to find better shots.

“Just overall effort, I think,” Cavs power forward Kevin Love said. “Just keeping our minds engaged, and it was just a good effort all around. You can’t really pinpoint what it was that kept us engaged throughout, but naturally, like any team, we’re going to be a better team when we do that. Tonight was very telling of that.”

Throw in a special performance from one of their special players -- Kyrie Irving joined John Stockton as the only other player since the 1983-84 season to put up at least 25 points and 11 assists while shooting 73 percent or better, according to BasketballReference.com research -- and the Cavs clearly played at another level, but one that felt like it could be replicated going forward.

All of the challenges the team had to go through the past two seasons -- the unfamiliarity, the injuries, the trades, the coaching change, the burden of expectations, the so-called Cleveland curse -- have been cleared away.

On Friday, with J.R. Smith coming off a three-game absence because of a sore right ankle and fitting right back into the scheme of things to give Cleveland its full complement of players, it could have been the signal that the Cavs truly are ready for takeoff.