Last season’s Eastern Conference Semifinals between the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards was the most entertaining series of an otherwise dull 2017 NBA Playoffs. It had fights, flops, big shots, even bigger performance and everything else you can imagine. It was also a hilarious caricature of the Wizards as a basketball team.

The Wizards’ starters outscored the Celtics by 75 points over seven games. They effectively began games with a 10-point head start. Then they squandered that head start as soon as any starter left the floor, with Boston eviscerating all other Washington lineups to the tune of 11.7 points per game. The Wizards’ starters were better, and their bench worse, than anyone thought.

Kelly Oubre Jr., the NBA’s premier hypebeast and resident bad boy, was a key member of that calamitous second unit. And after the Celtics blitzed the Wizards by 28.8 points per 100 possessions with Oubre on the floor, Scott Brooks pulled him from the rotation entirely for Game 7.

The swingman may have entered the league with livewire athleticism and a pristine shooting stroke, but his athleticism rarely manifested itself in effective defense, and for all its beauty, his shot clanged iron—or caught air—far too often. Role players who can’t defend or shoot at a passable level won’t log many minutes in big playoff games. Oubre found out the hard way.

Fast forward to 2018, and Oubre appears more like the solution than the problem when it comes to Washington’s creaky bench. He’s harnessed his obvious gifts to become a legitimate three-and-D(ish) player and one of Brooks’ most dependable performers.

Oubre has canned 37.7 percent of his 149 three-point attempts on the year, after hitting just 29.6 percent through his first two seasons. Much of that improvement comes down to his increased confidence on wide-open bunnies, which he’s sinking at a 42.0 percent clip, up from an abysmal 27.9 percent last year.

When players finally start converting open looks, the knock-on effects are perhaps even more important than the raw increase in efficiency. Oubre no longer shows hesitation on his more contested shot attempts, so he’ll hoist treys even when John Wall’s cross-court slingshots don’t have quite the same zip:

He’s also utilizing intelligent counter-moves now that defenders are closing out hard:

The knock-on effects are just as pronounced at the team level. Isaiah Thomas, normally catastrophic on defense, spent substantial time guarding Oubre in last year’s Boston series and made himself useful by cheating well off the Kansas product to clog lanes—like 20 feet off:

Opponents won’t give Oubre the Klay Thompson treatment now, but they can’t give him the Andre Roberson treatment either. Bad shooters sink offenses come playoff time, and the shooting-heavy Wizards won’t have to worry about that kind of glitch this time around.

They also won’t have to worry about fielding an undisciplined foul magnet on defense. After seeing his minutes cut midway through last season, Oubre very literally used his long arms to claw back a rotation spot. He embraced a defensive-pest role, hounding ball-handlers and wings and reaching for every steal possible.

That is not a fruitful strategy.

Oubre averaged 7.4 fouls per 36 minutes in the playoffs, less than half of which were actually shooting fouls. And he compounded those silly reach-ins by slamming into screens and generally looking lost outside rare isolation duels.

He’s beginning to correct those deficiencies, though. Oubre’s fouls have edged down from 4.4 per 36 minutes last year to 3.8, but he’s as disruptive as ever, ranking 12^th in the league in deflections per 36 minutes among players who have logged 500 minutes or more. He’s also one of the league’s few players with the quickness to take on roadrunner point guards and the length to corral forwards, allowing Brooks to throw him out there with a litany of lineup combinations.

Oubre is still just 22 years old. His instincts aren’t great, and his lithe frame makes him a liability switching onto big men. But, at the very least, he gives a jolt of effort to a team that often desperately needs one. He fills lanes in transition, gets low on defense, cuts intelligently and keeps his hands active—useful things that good role players do.

But here’s the thing: Wizards fans have long seen Oubre’s ascendance as their best hope of making the leap to contention. Either he’d become useful and unlock killer small-ball lineups with Otto Porter Jr. at the 4, or he’d make desirable trade bait should a superstar become available. Those predictions were only partially correct.

Even with Markieff Morris below his best, Washington’s starters have outscored teams by a healthy 4.8 points per 100 possessions. Plug Oubre into Morris’ spot, and that number jumps to 20.4 with an especially stingy 92.5 defensive rating. Except the Wizards are still just 22-16 and look more like a possible giant-killer than a giant themselves. Meanwhile, any available superstars moved in the summer, and a package headlined by Oubre and Porter may be too rich for Washington to cough up anyway.

The Wizards had six reliable players last season, if we include the departed Bojan Bogdanovic. They have six reliable players this season, too.

Ian Mahinmi has aged 10 years in the course of 18 months. Mike Scott has flitted in and out of rotations for years. Tim Frazier doesn’t play anymore. If you combined Tomas Satoransky and Jodie Meeks, you’d get one hell of a player, but individually, they’re tough to gauge.

Brooks has covered for those individual warts recently by keeping Porter on with the second unit and employing a tired but somewhat effective collection of horns sets. It’s just difficult to see where the points will come from when the playoffs roll around. Oubre isn’t a traditional playmaking sixth man. He’s finishing at a career-high 67.4 percent clip around the rim, but he lacks real craft inside the arc—even when Brooks gets him a runway from the elbow:

Look, the Wizards aren’t bad. They’re actually trending up with a 5.5 net rating over their last 15 games. At their free-flowing best, they look borderline unstoppable. Wall is a puppeteer in the pick-and-roll, controlling the ball and opposing defenders with equal mischief. Marcin Gortat’s screens are as effective as they are mean-spirited. Defenders are visibly scared to help off Porter, Morris, Oubre and Beal, a star-level guard who can cook fools by himself when Wall needs a blow.

Washington sometimes leaves opposing fans asking not just “How can we beat the Wizards today?” but “How can anyone beat the Wizards?”

And then, a few minutes later, they remember how. Wall and Beal are not cyborgs. They cannot play 48 minutes every night. Oubre’s rise has provided a spark for Washington, but it’s not a franchise-altering development.

The Wizards entered the season as a scary, pesky dark horse with plenty of question marks sitting on the bench. Oubre has answered one of those inquiries. Plenty more remain unresolved.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from NBA Math, Basketball Reference or NBA.com and are accurate heading into games on January 5.