Jaden McDaniels

Uh, McDaniels obviously is a pick and pop threat, is legit.

Uh, we saw [chuckles] Jaden McDaniels knock down four threes in this game.

Shot 41% from three last year.

So there's so many different kinda permutations of this pick and roll offense for Minnesota, and we saw that in this game, even if it wasn't directly delivering the ball to Rudy Gobert in the paint.

I wanna talk a little bit more.

We'll talk Jaden McDaniels, who was fantastic, was second on the team in scoring in this game.

We'll talk about the bench unit, a couple other kinda bigger picture things before we get a little bit later into the individual studs and duds.

We'll do all that here next on the show.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are not short on players who talk or play loud, but they have some ironing out of roles, the distribution of shots and touches, and the melding of new, high-maintenance pieces with incumbent, quiet veterans.

The two players I will be most interested in watching for the Timberwolves, with LaMelo Ball and Jonathan Kaminga joining Anthony Edwards, Jaden Daniels, and Rudy Gobert in the starting lineup, are Daniels and Gobert.

The Timberwolves came out of the gate in Game 1 looking to get Kaminga going, which is not that much of a surprise.

A lot of teams will do that as a way of making that new player get comfortable and feel valued.

A couple blocks.

Oh, that one on Jaden McDaniels was great.

Yeah.

Just being out there is like, it just felt like it didn't matter what he did as long as he just finished healthy.

And I think that the way Gobert plays a lot of drop coverage, and that's one of the things I wanted to see, They basically did not give the Pacers that advantage of like, oh, look, he's wide open there on a roll or a switch or something like that because they weren't doing that.

They were making sure that they sent multiple people to Zoo to kind of keep him from dominating the paint.

And as soon as he caught the ball one time, I think Jaden McDaniels just immediately sprinted down there and stripped the ball.

So...

The moment I felt the best about him, actually, was his first awesome defensive play.

He was guarding Jaden McDaniels, and Jaden McDaniels drives the basket.

Tyrus Halliburton blocks his shot.

Awesome block.

Now I'd probably live with Jonathan Kaminga just trying to take advantage of isolation situations.

But like Jaden McDaniels, pretty damn good player.

And there's different teams where you're going to deal with those same scenarios where I just still think they have so many defensive questions.

And last year they actually were pretty good about opponent rim frequency for what it's worth.

[dog barking] And I just, I still feel like he, he isn't thought of, like, as the, as the player that he actually is, which is a really phenomenal player.

I do feel like Jaden McDaniels', uh, best role is as probably a third best player, 'cause I think if he was the second best player on a team, he obviously could play that role, but they would not win a championship.

Yeah.

Like, Jaden McDaniels has to probably be a very, very solid third, third player on a team for that team to win a championship.

Um, I don't know what the Wolves are gonna do, but they're gonna be extremely, extremely exciting to watch at the bare minimum.

Um, I feel like if LaMelo and Edwards could kinda ta- at the same time kinda start maturing over these next couple years, like, they would have a shot I think.

Don't get me wrong, this is a seven in six performance in a basically, uh, you know, 16 minutes of play.

Although a couple blocks defensively, some of the stuff we saw in the playoffs last year was back, which is really encouraging that we can throw him on a guy like Jaden McDaniels and not feel like it's the total mismatch of the century in terms of we know that there's other guards in this league where it's the opposite, a la Jalen Brunson, a la Trae, Trae Young.

But just going down, it would've been, how does Tyrese look? How does the bench unit, like, flow? Like, everything just kept getting checked off.

And so I will kick it to you to then maybe go slightly into the cup half full of Zubac's looked the rustiest of anybody on that court.

Booker and Jaylen Brown.

I'm gonna cut Jaden McDaniels.

I, uh, like, real good player, I wanted to talk about him.

I'm gonna cut Markkanen as well.