After the Wolves stole Game 2 in Denver on April 20, Jaden McDaniels made headlines in potentially the most McDaniels way possible. With a straight face, McDaniels detailed what worked for the Wolves offensively in the victory.
“Go at Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders,” McDaniels said about Denver’s skillset defensively. “Tim Hardaway, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, their whole team.”
A member of the media would follow up by asking “they’re all bad defenders?”
“Yeah, they’re all bad defenders,” McDaniels would say with a deadpan expression.
The quote would catch fire over the following days as NBA media members would discuss whether this was a tactical ploy, or could ignite a fire in the Nuggets to play harder defense. However, on the Wolves side of things, the truth was much more simple — it’s just who McDaniels is. He points and smiles at defenders he deems can’t guard him, and owns up to it.
“To be honest I don’t really care who guards me,” McDaniels continued. “Sometimes in a game you might see me just pointing at the person that’s guarding me and I know like I can score on them”
He celebrates mid-shot on game winners, he throws off the bounce alley-oop’s to himself to close games, and he’s widely regarded as the second biggest trashtalker the Wolves have, as Gobert detailed last season during the playoffs.
“Like he will score a basket, and you can’t even read his lips,” Gobert said. “But he’ll be like “b****” and I’ll be like “who said that”… Jaden will almost whisper after he scores but he talks a lot too.”
It’s no wonder then that McDaniels is the person to add fuel to the fire in a playoff series. However, it also must be McDaniels that continues to shine for the Wolves to pull off the upset and dispatch the three-seeded Nuggets.
McDaniels is One of the Keys to the Series
McDaniels is the biggest question for the Nuggets to solve. Their defense just isn’t structured to stop a tertiary player with McDaniels’ skill set, especially given the Nuggets finished the regular season 21st in defensive rating. While McDaniels’ statement that all Nuggets are bad defenders, there are kernels of truth to his claim.
Realistically, the Nuggets had nine above-average defenders on roster this season, at least by the league average of defensive rating 114.1. However, of those nine, only one of them is in the Nuggets playoff rotation The other players are either out injured, rotational players or played at the end of games when the sample size isn’t large enough to merit a look in the playoffs.
The one player that had an above average season is Aaron Gordan who finished the season with a 112.0 defensive rating. Christian Braun did average exactly 114.1, so for arguments sake we could include him in the “good” defenders list.
In the matchup against the Wolves though, this is where the Nuggets problem is amplified. Gordan has to be the primary matchup on Wolves forward Julius Randle and that leaves Braun as the main defender for All-Star Anthony Edwards. The Nuggets thus far has opted to guard Rudy Gobert with Jokic, however, that is more by necessity than strategy as Jokic is far too large to guard McDaniels or Donte DiVincenzo. And Jokic held a defensive rating of 115.3 this year, ranking fifth-worst on the Nuggets regardless of minutes played.
This leaves either Jamal Murray, who had the worst defensive rating on the Nuggets at 117.7 or Cameron Johnson (114.7) left over to guard McDaniels and DiVincenzo. Off the bench, their options are equally slim with Tim Hardaway Jr. (114.9), Bruce Brown (115.2), Spencer Jones (115.3) or backup center Jonas Valanciunas (116.6).
Frankly, there are no good options for Denver to deploy on Minnesota’s wings, which bore out in Game 2 as McDaniels, Edwards, DiVincenzo and Ayo Dosunmu all attacked Murray, Johnson and company off of switches relentlessly. In 27 field goal shot against Murray as the primary defender, the Wolves have cashed in on 14 of them for 33 points, and this is with Murray for the most part playing solid defense having defensive ratings in Games 1 and 2 lower than his season average.
It makes sense why McDaniels made the comment he did given the context then. At any point in time McDaniels is being guarded by a bad defender. Some worse than others, but with McDaniels’ offensive skill set, none of the Nuggets options are going to have an easy time slowing him down, especially when McDaniels is playing with the confidence he has shown this season.
There is still a long way for the Wolves to go, but they do return home with a chance to take the series lead in Game 3. And unless Denver is able to find an answer for McDaniels, he is likely to continue to make headlines over the next few games. Whether it’s because of his play on the court or his comments off of it.