Now in his sixth NBA season, Jaden McDaniels has become such an important player for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Not only has he been the team’s best perimeter defender for a few years now, but his offensive role has continued to expand. McDaniels averaged 17.8 points over their 6-game opening round victory over the Denver Nuggets.
That scoring average would have been higher had the 25-year-old not consistently gotten into foul trouble. That has continued into Minnesota’s series against the San Antonio Spurs, and he finished with five fouls in Tuesday’s Game 5. Anthony Edwards has stated before that McDaniels is his favorite player, and he had this to say about his longtime teammate consistently getting into foul trouble,
“Everything starts with Jaden McDaniels, trying to keep him out of foul trouble. He’s so important to the team, he’s so important to us. It hurts everybody when he gets in foul trouble…we try to avoid getting him in foul trouble, if we can do that, we give ourselves a great chance to win the ballgame.”
The Timberwolves are one loss away from being eliminated. In order to stave that off, the Wolves need their best players, including McDaniels, to remain on the court.
McDaniels' foul woes have been going on all playoffs
Game 5 didn’t go the way that the Timberwolves had hoped. A 29-point loss now puts them in a 3-2 series hole.
It was another outing where McDaniels was unable to stay out of foul trouble. His third foul came with about 1.5 minutes left in the half, as he was switched onto Victor Wembanyama. With Wemby in the paint, McDaniels doesn’t have it in him to allow an easy basket, so he played physical defense before hacking him.
The fourth foul was committed a little more than 5 minutes into the third quarter. McDaniels missed a runner, and seemingly out of frustration, fouled Stephon Castle after he grabbed the defensive rebound. That sidelined Jaden for the rest of the third.
While McDaniels missed his last shot before his fourth foul, he made his previous two in the period. Trailing by eight going into halftime, the Timberwolves cut into San Antonio’s lead to begin the second half. When McDaniels left, they were only down by three.
Over the remainder of the quarter, Minnesota was outscored 27-12. A one-possession game turned into an 18-point deficit where it felt like a miracle would need to happen for the Wolves to come back (that miracle definitely didn’t occur).
Tuesday marked the third time in the five games played thus far in the Western Conference semifinals that McDaniels has totaled five fouls (in the other two contests, he has committed four).
In the Denver series, he had three games with five and two games with four. Remarkably, in 11 playoff games, McDaniels has just one in which he didn’t record at least four fouls (finished with two in Game 3 against the Nuggets).
There’s a reason that McDaniels is seen as one of the better defenders in the league. He takes great pride in that, and that pride can sometimes get in the way, where he won’t let up in order to stay out of foul trouble. Wolves fans certainly hope that Jaden doesn’t have to sit out during important stretches of Game 6 so they have their best chance to extend the series.
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