Deep Dive: It's Time To Talk About Jaden McDaniels' Offense
Minnesota's third-year wing has been more than just a defender.
Jaden McDaniels’ work has been palpable. In many respects, his work is the beating heart of this team. When you think of that work, you think of defense, you think of the spindly wing harassing the league’s best scorers, slipping through screens, and punching shots away at the rim. McDaniels is an All-World defender. It’s only natural that the image of his work manifests itself on that end of the floor.
But pigeon-holing McDaniels as the lanky point-of-attack pest and only that feels more absurd by the night. The work is palpable, it smacks you in the fucking face every time he steps on the floor, it twists and pulls at everything we love about watching young players develop. And that work has translated to the offensive side of the ball, as well.
Lurking beneath the depths of Anthony Edwards breaking out into a worthy All-Star candidate, Rudy Gobert’s turbulent beginnings in Minnesota, and Karl-Anthony Towns’ season-shaking injury, McDaniels has been progressing through a metamorphosis. No longer is he just that defender. The evidence is now insurmountable.
Even as a player who is often relegated to a low-usage break-glass option in Minnesota’s offensive stable, the 22-year-old is averaging 13.2 points and 2.8 assists in his last 15 games. But, where most players see their efficiency take a hit while starting to reach farther into their offensive bag, McDaniels has become one of the most efficient three-level scorers on the planet. If anything, there is an almost inarguable case that he should be getting even more shots.
At the time of writing, only six players in the league are shooting at least 70 percent at the rim, 40 percent on mid-range shots, and 40 percent from long-range, per Cleaning The Glass. Stephen Curry, Kevin Huerter, Grant Williams, Brook Lopez, Al Horford and Jaden McDaniels. Of those six, none have attempted more field goals at the rim than McDaniels’ 150 (making 105 — 70%) and only Huerter, Curry and Lopez have attempted more than McDaniels’ 96 mid-range attempts (making 42 — 44%).
McDaniels doesn’t have the outlandish volume from deep like a Curry or a Huerter or even a Lopez, but his numbers have been steadily rising in both volume and efficiency since Towns’ injury. In his 19 games before the big man’s calf strain on November 29, McDaniels was shooting 35.7 percent from range on 2.9 heaves a game. Since then, he has nailed 43.8 percent on 3.2 attempts a night over 25 outings.
Process often gets hurled to the wayside when presenting numbers, but it’s important to recognize that Minnesota’s ‘other’ young star isn’t taking the same shots as some of his counterparts in those three-level efficiency rankings. At least not from behind the arc. McDaniels is a spot-up guy, a kid who is quickly shifting from a capable shooter to a catch-and-shoot gunner.
While he has shown he can rifle out of Spain pick-and-roll actions to knock down straight-away triples or lope off pindowns into slot treys, his role as a shooter is mostly to release any pressure building on Minnesota’s offense. When he is spotted-up in the corner, it is hardly an expulsion from the offense but rather a way to punish defenses and stretch them to the point of breaking.
There are very few things as crucial to Minnesota’s offense as McDaniels’ ability to knock down these shots. Look at the ring of fire that surrounds Edwards as he makes his move from the corner — the only way to penalize a defense for committing so much attention to one player is to twist open the pressure valve and make this corner shot.
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