Doug McDermott: Need to figure out D if I want to stay on the floor

"The main thing is I'm really trying to get better defensively in practice," he said. "It's been tough. They call me for a lot of fouls. I guarded a lot of (power forwards) in college. I'm guarding (small forwards) who are athletic here. I'm going to have to figure it out if I want to stay on the floor."

That may be overstating matters a bit. Shooting and spacing are both critical for Fred Hoiberg's offensive philosophy and McDermott provides both.

And this is actually a slightly different offensive role for McDermott, whose prolific scoring at Creighton came in a wide variety of ways.

"In college, I posted up a bunch, faced up. That was more my game," McDermott said. "I've had to translate my game a bit to shoot 3s and hit floaters. That's something I can do for this team hopefully for a long time."