Jerome Dyson, Marcus Lewis lead Tulsa against Bakersfield in Tuesday D-League action

Nothing’s really changed.

For two years, Nate Tibbetts drilled it into his Tulsa 66ers teams: Play defense. Move your feet and stick with your guy like a sofa cushion in the summer and do it every minute of every game because when the scouts come to look at you at an NBA Development League game and you let up once—just once—they’re gonna leave thinking that you can’t defend anybody in the NBA, either.

Which is partly why the 66ers still have the league’s best defense, arguably its best perimeter defender and without question the best rebounder in the NBA D-League, even after Tibbetts got his own NBA call-up this season and slid into a spot on the Cleveland Cavaliers' bench.

On Tuesday, watch live on SportingNews.com as Jerome Dyson, the defender, and Marcus Lewis, the rebounder, lead the Western Conference’s fifth-place team against the third-place Bakersfield Jam at 8 p.m. ET in a battle for position in the ever-shrinking NBA D-League playoffs race.

Two teams have already booked spots—both of them from the Western Conference—as the first-place L.A. D-Fenders and second-place Austin Toros secured berths over the past week. Now, with six spots left in the postseason, the home stretch is turning into a sprint to just fit into the door.

And the 66ers aren’t just in a race with their Western Conference rivals. The structure of the NBA D-League postseason, where both conference regular-season winners make the playoffs, followed by the six teams with the next best records—regardless of conference—put them in direct competition with the rest of the league.

Which means, with just five games left in the regular season and a 2.5-game deficit to make up before the playoffs begin, the league’s premier defense has to clamp down even more.

Tulsa’s got the talent to make a late-season run, too. Dyson came into the NBA D-League as one of its best athletes, and he’s learning how to make decisions at the point to keep up with the speed and explosiveness that have made him a lockdown defender. Among players who’ve appeared in 20 games or more, nobody’s close to Lewis in rebounding. His closest competition—Austin Toros forward Eric Dawson, who’s now up with the San Antonio Spurs—has pulled down 10.4 boards per game, which puts him 2.3 per game shy of Lewis’ 12.7.

Meanwhile, guard Dwight Buycks and forward Larry Owens rank among the top-flight NBA prospects at their positions, with Owens already having played a stint with the New Jersey Nets earlier this year. And until they head back to the Oklahoma City Thunder, assignees Reggie Jackson and Ryan Reid should bolster a lineup in need of some scoring help.

But they’ll face one of the league’s toughest tests in Bakersfield, which features a lineup as deep as any in the NBA D-League, including three top prospects, in point guard Jeremy Wise, forward Juan Pattillo and 6-foot-11 center—and unlikely 3-point threat—Brian Butch.