In the Rotation: NBA Week 5

In Hollywood, award season is just around the corner. Soon we'll find out who will be awarded the top honors the music, television, and movie industry has to offer.

In the NBA, we're nowhere near finding out who will take home top honors.

Still, we've seen a big enough sample from each team to be able to make early assessments, even if we don't have any clue what is in store for any of these teams for the remainder of the season.

With November officially in the rearview mirror, what better way to look back at the first month of the NBA season than by handing out a little hardware of our own.

In today's Starting Five, we take a look at the best that the first month of the NBA season had to offer.

Starting Five

Best Team: Los Angeles Lakers

The Celtics may be the defending champs, and the Cavaliers may look like they will be a force to be reckoned with, but the Lakers have been far and away the best team in the NBA this season.

Though their schedule has been favorable (just five road games), the Lakers have rolled through the competition with little to no resistance in the first month. Their 13.7 points per game differential is by far the best in the league (Cleveland is the only other team over 10.0). If it weren't for the shocking-to-say-the-least 11-point home loss to the Pistons, the Lakers would be beating teams by an average of 15 points per night.

The Lakers have been so much better than everyone else in the league that it hasn't been close. Literally. The Lakers are the only team in the league that has not played a game decided by five points or less. In fact, the closest anyone has been able to get to the Lakers is seven points, a "feat" accomplished just four times by opposing teams the first month of the season.

I know that it's still very early and that anything can happen with still four and a half months left in the regular season, but there is no denying that there is something special about this Laker team so far.

I promised myself I would use the "s" word with this team until after the first of the year, but let's just say that this Lakers team looks like it has the best possible chance to post a 12-loss season that the NBA has seen in a long, long time.

2. Best Player: LeBron James

Let's forget for a second that LeBron is averaging a ridiculous 27.8 points, 7.2 boards, 6.4 assists, 2 steals, 1 block, a career high 49% from the floor, and doing it all in a career-low 35 minutes per game, all while his team is off to the best start it's had since he arrived in 2003.

You want to know how good James has been this season? He's been so dominant that some teams have actually been able to convince their fans that it's okay to give up on the next two seasons because LeBron will be a free agent after that and they will take a run at him.

Putting up monster numbers on a fast starting team is usually good enough to win you a player of the month award, but putting up monster numbers on a fast starting team and single-handedly altering the future of the sport, well that earns LeBron my vote for Best Player through the first month of the season.

3. Best Rookie: Derrick Rose

The biggest, and most pleasant, surprise of the NBA season so far has been how talented the draft class of '08 has been. Already we've seen no fewer than 10 rookies come in and have immediate impacts on their team.

And with all apologies to O.J. Mayo and Michael Beasley, both of whom have been spectacular, Derrick Rose has been the best of the bunch so far.

It's not just the fact that the number one overall pick has gotten off to a fast start, 18 points, 6 assists, and 4 rebounds per game in his first month as an NBA player certainly constitutes as a fast start, but it's how he's gotten there that sets Rose apart from the other rookies.

Playing alongside one of the worst supporting casts in the league, Rose's leadership and efficiency has been able to lead the Bulls to a respectable 8-9 start. Sure, being under .500 won't get you very far in this league, but take Derrick Rose off this Bulls team, and I'm not sure that this group could win 20 games.

Rose has shown the ability to get anywhere he wants on the court at any given time with his lightning quick ball handling (ask Andre Miller), but has also shown the maturity needed to play the point guard position at this level with his shooting percentage at an amazing 49% and his turnovers per game at a manageable 2.6 per game (not terrible for someone who handles the ball as much as he does).

Combine Rose's great start with O.J. Mayo showing off his unlimited range in Memphis and Michael Beasley showing flashes of what made him a 20-10 guy every night at Kansas State, and we could be watching the second best draft class of the decade start to blossom right before our very eyes.

4. Best Breakout Player: Devin Harris

Harris erased all doubt that this award should go to anyone else with his amazing performance Sunday night against the Suns in Phoenix.

After scoring 21 first half points and adding 5 more in the third, Harris exploded for another 21 in the fourth quarter to finish with a career-high 47 points and lead the Nets to a come-from-behind victory on the road in a city that the Nets haven't won in since 1993.

Harris has now scored at least 30 points in six of the 13 games that he has played this season. The most remarkable part of that stat is that in the 276 games that Harris had played prior to this season, he had never reached 30 points in a game.

Harris' 47-point outburst Sunday night may have finally put him on the national radar, which means that hopefully Sunday's performance won't be his one and only trip to Phoenix (host of the 2009 All-Star Game) this season.

5. Best Breakout Team: Portland Trail Blazers

It was a toss-up here between the Hawks and Blazers, and really you can't go wrong either way. But after watching the beatdown the Trail Blazers put on the Pistons in Detroit Sunday afternoon, it's hard not to consider this team to be a real contender out West.

Brandon Roy, aside from being one of the most clutch performers in the league, is also one of the best one-on-one players in the game. He has the perfect mix of playmaker and scorer in him and it leads to a lot of high quality possessions for this team.

Meanwhile, LaMarcus Aldridge has the best inside-outside game the Blazers have seen since Rasheed Wallace, without the 43 technical fouls that Rasheed was bringing to the table.

And Greg Oden, living under a bigger microscope than those other two players combined, has been everything that the Blazers have needed him to be down low, rebounding and playing defense like a number one overall pick should, accumulating five double-doubles in the 11 games since his injury on opening night.

Combine the contributions of those three players with some unbelievable bench play from Travis Outlaw and rookie sensation Rudy Fernandez and it all adds up to a 12-6 record for Portland, good for first place in their division and the second best record in the Western Conference.

In the Rotation

San Antonio Spurs

I wrote in my season preview that, "It doesn't matter a whole heck of a lot that Ginobili is out (he missed some time last year, too), the Spurs will again reach the 50-win mark for the ninth straight season."

Sure enough, the loss of arguably their two best players (though let's face it, this team goes as Tim Duncan goes) for a majority of the month hasn't affected the Spurs.

Though their 9-7 start to the season is far below the bar they have set for themselves over the last decade, being able to play over .500 for the month despite getting a whopping two games with all of their big three together spells trouble for the rest of the West.

The Spurs enter December having won four of their last five games and play seven games against surefire lottery teams this month, meaning that by January 1st, expect to read plenty of "The Spurs are back!" articles as the world once again realizes that the Western Conference championship will go through San Antonio.

Out of the Rotation

Oklahoma City Thunder

I don't know what to call the situation in OKC right now. "Rebuilding" implies that they are actually leading up to something, and right now that doesn't look like the case.

They've fired their head coach, shuffled their starting lineup, tried different groups of guys together, and nothing works.

One of the things that I've noticed from watching the League Pass this year is that the Thunder have a great crowd during home games, but the only way to ensure that fans stay on your side is to win and win consistently, and this team is nothing short of a miracle from making that happen.

I'm not going to embarrass them by printing out their stats for the year, but I'll say this: dating back to last season, the Thunder/Sonics have lost 35 of their last 41 games, which includes losing streaks of 11 and 14 games.

Either Kevin Durant needs to step up and become a go-to player night in and night out or GM Sam Presti needs to start over and bring Durant lots and lots of help, quickly. If not, the Thunder are in danger of losing the one and only thing they have going for them right now: a passionate fanbase.

Inactive List

Allen Iverson

We're talking about practice. Not a game. Practice.

Again.

I actually had the conversation with my family on Thanksgiving about how despite the fact that the Pistons have gotten off to an understandably slow start with Iverson, he's been the ideal teammate, saying all the right things and playing hard every night while they try to find their new identity.

Then, basically minutes later, I find out that he is the only Piston to miss a mandatory practice Thursday morning, will incur a "hefty fine," and be removed from the starting lineup for the following night's game.

Then, to top it off, I get a phone call in the wee hours of Saturday night that Iverson has been at a local Detroit casino drinking and gambling for several hours, despite the fact that the Pistons have an unusually early 3 PM start the following day (the aforementioned beatdown the Blazers put on Detroit).

The honeymoon is officially over.

Look, I could care less what players do with their free time, and I'm sure Iverson isn't the first or last NBA player to take advantage of the 24-hour Vegas-style legalized gambling in Detroit, but when A.I. says one thing (he was quoted the local paper this week as saying that all the Pistons need is a little more practice time to gel) and does another (skips a mandatory practice), every step and misstep he takes will be met with a fair amount of scrutiny.

The fact is, since Iverson arrived in Detroit the Pistons have lost five games by double-digit margins. That's already half as many as they had all of last season.

We all know that "practice" is already in Allen Iverson's vocabulary. Now, he needs to make it part of his daily routine, or he will quickly find himself in the doghouse of a fan base that demands, and has gotten, excellence from its basketball team for the better part of the last 20 years.

So please, save the trips to the three-card poker table and practice skipping for next year when you are someone else's problem. The city of Detroit has enough problems as it is right now, we don't need a superstar basketball player whose heart isn't in the right place to kick us while we're down.

Be sure to check back at Sports Central every Monday to see who cracks Scott Shepherd's rotation as he breaks down what is going on around the NBA.