The stat sheet of a basketball game often feels as much like an impressionist painting as a mathematical calculation in terms of providing a picture of what actually transpired.
For example, a player can nonchalantly toss the ball over to his teammate with no defender around either player. The teammate then proceeds to dazzle-dribble his way past two opponents and dances a little Euro-step around a third before laying the ball in the basket. If the official scorer is in a charitable mood that night, the player making the nonchalant pass will be credited with an assist.
By contrast, a player can be so fearsomely skilled that he draws three defenders in his foray toward the hoop, leaving two teammates wide open. He cleverly zips the ball to the first one, who dutifully moves it along to the second one, who scores the basket. There is no assist for the player who magnetized three defenders, just for the middle-man in the three-player transaction.
If a player dribbles the ball off his foot and it comes to you, it likely will register that you “stole” the ball. But if you and a teammate tenaciously trap a ball-handler in a double-team, and both of you deflect the desperate pass he makes trying to escape it, only one of you will get credit for a “steal”—or maybe neither one of you, if the scorer decides another teammate who catches the deflection somehow deserves credit instead.
If you snuff a player driving to the rim, is it a “steal” or a “block”? Sometimes it depends where in the shooting motion you snuff the shot (was it below the waist or the shoulder?); or how far it has left his hand; or whether it might be perceived as a pass instead of a shot. Or maybe the shooter was able to fumble up a feeble airball toward the rim that you barely deflected and the scorer determines it is merely a missed shot with no steal nor block registered.
Which brings us to the phenomenal performance of Minnesota Timberwolves forward Jaden McDaniels in the first quarter of his team’s past two games. Over a total of sixteen minutes and 30 seconds of playing time, McDaniels was credited with eight steals. To give you a sense of how outlandish that is, the NBA player who has stolen the ball most frequently of anyone thus far this season, Dyson Daniels of the Atlanta Hawks, has 74 steals in 849 minutes logged over 25 games—less than three per game and one approximately every 11 and a half minutes. In the first quarters against the Lakers on Friday and the Spurs on Sunday, McDaniels stole the ball approximately every two minutes he was on the court.
That’s what the stat sheet says, anyway. In fact, two of the “steals” are outright gifts from the official scorer. On Friday, the Lakers’ Anthony Davis dribbled the ball off his foot and it rolled to McDaniels. On Sunday, his fellow starting forward Julius Randle disrupted a shot attempt by the Spurs’ Jeremy Souchan and Souchan flailing attempt to rescue the play with a kick-out pass went right to McDaniels.
But this time, the favor inflation worked on the side of justice. Eight steals in less than two full quarters was such a gaudy number that I had to investigate further. And the six legitimate plays that remain tell us a lot about the recent quantum leap McDaniels has made in his play overall.
Against the Lakers, McDaniels blew up pick-and-roll actions without fouling. In the game’s first two minutes, he fought through a Davis screen to stay with his assignment, Austin Reaves, then poke-checked a bounce pass to Reaves to teammate Mike Conley.
Four minutes later, he fought through another Davis screen to get to Reaves, only to discover that center Rudy Gobert had come out to the perimeter to switch on to Reaves. Shifting gears and direction with adroit athleticism, he scrambled back into the passing lane quickly enough to poke away Reaves’ pass to the cutting Davis.
The final steal of the quarter was grand theft blotto: McDaniels pounced on a lazy inbounds pass to Davis and needed just one dribble and two steps before ascending for thunderous slam dunk.
Two nights later against the Spurs, the prevailing theme on the trio of legit steals was length and tenacity. All were executed in the paint, deflecting passes that were over his head to foil drive-and-kicks plays. But his contribution never stopped there.
On the first one he leapt to deflect a Souchan pass, then chased down the loose ball quickly enough to overtake Souchan in the scramble to the sideline and throw it off him out of bounds to gain the possession.
On the second one, he and Gobert teamed up to block a pass by San Antonio’s seven-and-a-half foot praying mantis, Victor Wembanyama, but the force of the play knocked him over. He clambered to his feet, received a short pass from Randle and tore downcourt on the dribble, feeding it back to Randle for the layup.
On the third one, he again jumped high to intercept a Souchan pass from beside the rim headed back out to the perimeter, then, just before falling out of bounds on the endline, quickly fed to Mike Conley, who whisked it to an onrushing Anthony Edwards for another layup.
Scoring in transition
All season long, the Wolves have betrayed their offense with a lack of initiative trying to score in transition. They have forced the sixth-most turnovers in the 30-team NBA, yet rank 27th in fast-break points. That’s because they don’t get out and run to create official “transition” playtypes. By a wide margin they are dead-last in transition possessions and dead-last in points scored off transition plays.
Against the Lakers, McDaniels fostered transition on all three of his legitimate first-quarter steals. He ran out for a layup after poke-checking the ball from Reaves, tried to score racing down after intercepting the pass on Davis’ cut, and of course, rapidly flushed the ball through the hoop on his steal of the inbounds pass.
Against the Spurs, he could merely save the possession and not further the play when he threw the ball off of Souchan. But the other two first-quarter steals saw him get off the deck to work a two-man transition play with Randle for a layup, and then ignite a fast break by saving his deflection to Conley who promptly threw it ahead to Ant.
Six legitimate steals in two first quarters is fantastic, and the way McDaniels sought (and mostly succeeded) to parlay them into transition points adds luster to the achievement.
But the real eye-opener was his rebounding. In the 307 games prior to the Lakers contest last Friday, McDaniels has grabbed 11 rebounds once and 10 rebounds once—both back in the 2021 calendar year. He had corralled 9 rebounds five other times. His sixth time happened Friday, and set what at the time was a season high in rebounds for him. Then on Sunday against Wemby and the Spurs, he tied his career-high with 11, four of them offensive rebounds, which also tied his career-high. And obviously the 20 total rebounds over a two-game span was a career-high.
This is another way McDaniels has emerged from his tepid start to the season. He had never averaged more than 4.2 rebounds per game in any of his first four years in the league, and went below even that-mediocre standard by grabbing 2.8 rebounds per game in four October contests and 60 boards in 15 November games (an average of four apiece). But through six December games, his average is up to 5.7, which would be the highest monthly mark of his career if he sustains it.
I have been hard on McDaniels thus far this season. His woeful start had me worrying about the future viability of the “second timeline” trio of him, Ant and Naz in a column last month and despite his placement on the All Defensive NBA second team last season, I didn’t include him as a significant factor in the Wovles’ rediscovery of their defensive identity last week. At the bottom line, the Wolves still allow more points per possession when McDaniels is on the court compared to when he sits, even during the defensive renaissance that had propelled them to six wins in their past seven games.
The fact that McDaniels’ playing time is purposefully meant to be in sync with the opponent’s top wing scorer—his inevitable assignment–on the court is a mitigating factor. But the team’s negative defensive rating when he plays versus when he doesn’t didn’t happen his first three seasons, and much of the latter two of those years was in the wing-stopper role.
No, the encouraging thing about Jaden’s recent upgrade in performance is how broad-based and organic it has been. He is becoming more versatile and less of a defensive specialist, even as some aspects of his defense are likewise on the rise.
Avoiding foul trouble
From the beginning, he has been prone to getting into foul trouble, which makes him less reliable and exerts a domino effect on defensive roles when the whistles force him to the sidelines. But after averaging 3.25 fouls per game in October and 3.5 in November, he has committed a mere 9 fouls in six December games, stabilizing the rotation.
At the same time he has found his shooting stroke. His shooting splits (field goal percentage/three-point percentage/true shooting percentage) have gone from 45.5/18.2/50.2 in October to 43.7/30.8/52.4 in November to 47.2/47.4/57.1 thus far in December.
Everything about McDaniels is pointing upward: His defense, his shooting, his rebounding and his avoidance of fouling. The way he has stuffed the stat sheet in the past two games is notable because neither the Lakers nor the Spurs played the sort of potent wing scorer that would otherwise occupy so much of his energy and attention.
It opens the door to the possibility of more flexible roles in the Wolves rotation. Against the Spurs he helped clog the paint to deter Wemby and the drive-and-kick playmakers, plus helped Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker hold future Hall-of-Fame point guard Chris Paul without a field goal in more than 30 minutes of play. And against the Lakers, he was able to switch and react with more fluidity knowing that his usual assignment, Lebron James, wasn’t playing.
In other words, there can be circumstances where NAW can become the wing stopper and let McDaniels help Gobert regulate the paint. There can be smallball lineups where Randle is the de facto center and McDaniels the power forward. Such a small frontcourt would require rigorous fly-around defensive schemes elsewhere on the second unit (maybe adding Josh Minott or Rob Dillingham). But it would enable more playing time for the Wolves best five-player lineup (Conley-Gobert-Naz-NAW-DiVincenzo) and if McDaniels catch-and-shoot three-point accuracy continues, he becomes a natural partner when Randle is drawing defenders and kicking out for open treys for his teammates. Over the past seven games, the Wolves net rating (points scored versus points allowed is +18.6 points per 100 possessions when those two share the court.
On a personal level, McDaniels has earned every bit of his improvement. The wing-stopper role is exhausting and thankless and he has successfully inhabited it by becoming almost tunnel-visioned with respect to the task and extremely hard on himself when things don’t go his way.
Too often in the past, his temper would willfully overwhelm his judgment and he’d commit silly fouls or let ire cloud his focus. That hasn’t been the case lately. Nowadays, whether you regard the stat sheet as impressionistic or mathematical, the numbers are impressive. Meanwhile, the eye-test has been sublime.
Britt Robson
Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.
