HoopsHype has been slowly rolling out its player rankings for the 2025-26 season by position. The Minnesota Timberwolves did not have a point guard ranked in the top 26. Unsurprisingly, Anthony Edwards was named the league’s top shooting guard. On Tuesday, the top 26 small forwards list came out, and Jaden McDaniels was ranked as the 15th-best.
Coming off a season with numerous career-highs
Preparing for his sixth NBA season (all with Minnesota), McDaniels will turn 25 years old on September 29. Selected with the 28th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, McDaniels has been a full-time starter for the Wolves in each of the last three seasons. He will be entering the second year of a five-year, $131 million rookie scale extension that he signed in the 2023 offseason.
The 6-foot-9 small forward may not score as often as most of those that were ranked above him. Most above him also though don’t possess the defensive chops that McDaniels does. In 2023-24, he was named to the All-Defensive second team. This past season, he didn’t make either team, but he did receive 10 second team votes.
His 12.2 points per contest in 2024-25 are a career-best, and the third straight season in which McDaniels has averaged double figures in scoring. Other career-high averages from last season include rebounding (5.7), assists (2.0), and steals (1.3).
Huge scoring numbers shouldn’t be expected on a team with Anthony Edwards, and to a lesser extent, Julius Randle (previously to Randle, Karl-Anthony Towns). Still, McDaniels has stepped up when it matters most, with improved scoring and efficiency in each of the last two postseasons, where the Wolves have reached the conference finals. McDaniels also averaged 24.3 points in the three games Edwards missed last season.
McDaniels appeared in all 82 games in 2024-25 and has never had a season of more than 10 missed outings.
Case to be ahead of some ranked above him
Small forward is a talented position in today’s NBA. Being seen as the 15th-best shouldn’t be seen as complete disrespect, but McDaniels does have a case to be above some that were ranked higher. Those that were ranked from 14th to ninth in order are Brandon Ingram, Michael Porter Jr., Norman Powell, Jalen Johnson, Deni Avdija, and DeMar DeRozan.
While HoopsHype’s rankings are well-respected by most, it’s odd to see DeRozan up at ninth. Sure, he’s still a bucket-getter and does his work better than most in the midrange, but he hasn’t been a ceiling-raiser in years. The Kings were destroyed on the defensive end when DeRozan, Domantas Sabonis, and Zach LaVine shared the court. At 36 years old, it’s hard to imagine many GMs would take DeRozan over McDaniels, even just for the upcoming season.
Most of the others, as well, can be debated. Ingram, Porter Jr., and Johnson have extensive injury histories. Powell is coming off a career-best season, but will he continue to build off that at 32 years old on a new team (Heat)?