The Rotation: Eric Bledsoe is teaching the teacher

The NBA regular season is a freight train that waits for no one. With multiple games nearly every single night, it can be difficult to keep up. As a solution, we humbly offer The Rotation — a daily recap series sharing three big stories from the previous night, one focused on a player, one focused on a single play, one focused on the big picture.

Demar DeRozan is here to save the mid-range jumper

By Trevor Magnotti (@illegalscreens)

Through the first eight minutes of last night’s game between the Toronto Raptors and Washington Wizards, it looked like DeMar DeRozan was finally starting to cool off. DeRozan struggled to find a rhythm early, posting just three points on 1-of-3 shooting, and missing as many free throws as he had points. DeRozan’s cold start affected the team, too; when the Wizards took a timeout with 2:56 left in the quarter, the Raptors trailed 27-16.

Just under 40 minutes (of game time) later, none of that mattered. The Raptors won, 113-103. And DeRozan, who entered the night averaging 35 points per game on 53.8 percent shooting, exited averaging 36.3 points per game on 55.4 percent shooting, dropping 40 points, five rebounds, and five assists in the win.

DeRozan was chastised a lot by critics and fans this summer. He just signed a max deal to remain with the Raptors, and that seemed like it could be questionable, given that DeRozan is in many ways the antithesis of what we want from modern NBA basketball. He’s a good scorer, but he doesn’t shoot threes very well, and loves to shoot from the no-man’s land of midrange. He puts up assist numbers, but isn’t a good technical passer. He has the length and size you love in a wing, but he’s not an attentive or consistent defender.

This season, though, DeRozan’s basically been a throwback to the glory days of Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, and Tracy McGrady. DeRozan appears to have taken a leap simply by getting better at the things that he was already good at. Last night was no different. His 40 points came with just two three-point attempts, and just five of his 23 shot attempts came inside the paint. DeRozan was scoring on the shots he loves: Catching the ball about 30 feet from the hoop, making a few dribble moves (maybe with a high screen to work around), and then burying an 18-22 foot jumper:

DeRozan has long been a player that has flummoxed analytical basketball fans, due to his propensity for taking the shots that generally have the least value in basketball. But it’s also important to recognize that DeRozan is really, really good at hitting that shot — so much so that it becomes an advantage for Toronto. Most NBA defenses are designed to force midrange jumpers like the shots DeRozan likes. But when DeRozan starts hitting a flurry of the shots the defense wants him to hit, it makes the defense re-adjust, and opens up more efficient shots.

That’s what happened in this game, as the Wizards attempted to pack the paint after an early bundle of Raptor makes at the rim. In the third quarter, the Raptors started throwing DeRozan the ball, and he started getting those inefficient buckets. That caused the Wizards to send extra help to no man’s land to account for DeRozan, and after attempting 12 midrange shots in the third quarter, Toronto took 8-of-13 shots either from three or at the rim in the fourth, and generated 13 free throw attempts, many of which came from DeRozan and Kyle Lowry having lanes to drive to the hole.

This season almost seems like DeRozan is forcing us to accept that he’s an efficient scorer, even if those points don’t come in the ways we think they should. If this hot start is a way of forcing us to appreciate his craft, last night was his magnum mid-range opus.

What happens when the teacher gets taught?

By Brendon Kleen (@BrendonKleen14)

Three years ago, when Damian Lillard won a seven game series with his bare hands, shooting over Chandler Parsons and cementing his status as one of the most clutch scorers of our time, something changed in Portland:

Having that kind of weapon makes defending your team nearly impossible — “clutch” shooting requires quickness, accuracy, and confidence, all things that are easily translated to other bail-out situations. To be able to pull out “a Lillard” when all else fails helps you remain patient in seeing Plans A-Z to their end. The faith the team was able to put in Dame after that shot has rung important in everything they’ve done since; letting four starters walk last summer, trusting and retaining every youngster this summer, and building an offensive style centered around shooting and backcourt playmaking.

And to start this season, Lillard has made Portland GM Neil Olshey look really smart. He continues to single-handedly make the team’s offense greater than the sum of its parts, feeding teammates and propping up the team. Some important people have him as their MVP pick through five games.

Last night, Lillard didn’t give his supporters any reason to shy away, putting up a 27-5-5 line that has become commonplace for him. Except that on the final play of overtime, matched up with Phoenix point guard Eric Bledsoe (6-19 overall, 0-3 from three to that point) tiptoed his way into an open-ish deep attempt that (of course) splashed right on through:

And thus, we see the good and bad of the Damian Lillard Experience. For all the damage he can do throughout a game and especially in the final few minutes of close contests, he can bleed it all back through inattention on defense. Was that the problem tonight? Perhaps. But I’d wager that Bledsoe’s confidence rising for the shot was a result of his disrespect for Dame’s defense. That’s a problem. For the Portland Trailblazers, everything flows through Damian Lillard. In success, in failure, and tonight, in some random dumb luck.

The Thunder are 4-0 and the Warriors are not

By Dan Israeli (@danisraeli)

After nine days of NBA regular season action, only two teams remain undefeated. One is the reigning champion Cavaliers, which shouldn’t shock anyone. Cleveland’s baseball team may have just lost a heartbreaking Game 7 in the World Series (extending their title drought to 68 years), but their basketball team is thriving in 2016.

The other undefeated team (both 4-0) is the Thunder. While their 3-0 start was taken with a grain of salt based on the competition (Sixers, Suns, Lakers), OKC passed its first real test of the season with flying colors, pulling out an 85-83 win over the previously undefeated Clippers at the Staples Center. The Thunder, of course, were lead by Russell Westbrook who poured in 35 points (14-30 shooting) to go with six rebounds, five assists, and three steals. It was a tepid line compared to the triple-double averaging stats Russ entered the game with, but the win against way stiffer competition was paramount.

In the end, the Thunder stole an ugly game against a Clips team that had Tuesday off after back-to-back home wins to start the week against the Jazz and Suns. Neither team shot well as the Clippers were 39 percent from the field and 7-22 from deep, while the Thunder shot 40.5 percent from the field and an even worse 5-20 from distance. Neither really made an impact from the line either; the Clips were 8-18 (44.4 percent) and the Thunder were 12-20 (60 percent).

It was one of those games where something had to give and that something was Westbrook, the only Thunder player to score in double figures as 10 other guys chipped in nine points or less.

The second leading OKC scorer was Victor Oladipo with nine points on 3-11 shooting to go with five rebounds and one assist. Oladipo logged 32 minutes, but was invisible after a slow start. After averaging 17.6 shot attempts in his first three games of the season, Westbrook’s perceived running mate in the backcourt took a backseat against the Clips in the second half, as the poor shooting that has plagued his season so far appeared to finally zap his confidence.

There is plenty of opportunity for Oladipo in this Thunder offense, even with Westbrook’s absurd usage rate, as he is the clear-cut second option and given liberty to shoot at will, not to mention the staggered minutes he’s receiving without Russ on the court. The issue is Oladipo is relying too much on taking threes early in games, and would be better off trying to work defenders off the dribble, attacking the basket — unless the Thunder intend to start using him in some type of screen game.

So should we still err on the side of caution when looking at the Thunder’s perfect record? Small sample sizes aside, a road win against the Clippers is still a road win against the Clippers. The Thunder have achieved their impressive start while working in many new pieces — just recently acquiring Jerami Grant — as they try to unlock a new identity. Considering that, prior to this season, a Durant-less Thunder often resulted in fourth quarter meltdowns and Herculean Westbrook efforts that went for naught, the early returns have to be viewed optimistically.

The most impressive take away, other than Westbrook’s MVP-like start, has been OKC’s effort on defense. Yes the competition has been weak, but outside last Friday’s shootout with the Suns, the Thunder have held every opponent to under 100 points. That includes the high-scoring Clips at home who were surprisingly out-rebounded by the Thunder 52-41, including 10-8 on the offensive glass. For all the knocks on his defense, Kanter is a plus rebounder off the bench. The Grant trade added another athletic defender to the fold who showed off his ability with two blocks during his 17-minute Thunder debut.

The 4-0 mark could get exposed sooner than later, but it may also propel the confidence of a squad still trying to convince some doubters that they’re a playoff team. The growing emergence of Grant is an interesting new wrinkle, but it will be the fortunes of Oladipo as a star second fiddle that should determine whether OKC’s strong start is sustainable.