Jaden McDaniels might have had the best game of his career before friends and family in Portland on Tuesday.
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As he watched Jaden McDaniels unleash his full arsenal on the Portland Trail Blazers, validation washed over Jamal Crawford. He was seated courtside as the color analyst for the Peacock broadcast, a fitting vantage point because Crawford has been front and center in McDaniels’ basketball life from the very early days.
Crawford is a legend in Seattle, a larger-than-life figure who has tried to fill the hole in its heart left by the SuperSonics’ departure almost 20 years ago. His Pro-Am brings the league back to the city every summer. He coaches his son’s AAU team, runs a camp, trains young players and serves as a mentor to so many others. One of the kids who came through his program was a tall, skinny kid from Federal Way, a 30-minute drive from the big city.
Even when McDaniels was 16 years old, Crawford knew he was different.
“I always look at the height-to-skill ratio,” Crawford said by phone after McDaniels and the Minnesota Timberwolves edged the Blazers, 124-121, on Tuesday night. “His height and how skilled he was, he loved to play. A lot of guys play and a lot of guys like it, but he loved to play, loved to compete and I saw that even at a young age.”
What stood out most to Crawford was the diligence McDaniels put into his workouts. At an age when so many act too cool to go through a pre-workout warmup routine, McDaniels caught Crawford’s attention by the way he stretched before hitting the court. It told Crawford that he took the game seriously, that he was there to put in the work.
“Even then, his game was easy to love,” Crawford said.
In McDaniels’ sixth season in the league, everyone else is beginning to see what Crawford has believed for so long. Long thought of as a defensive specialist with limited offensive potential, McDaniels has blossomed into a true two-way player. He stamped that new reality in Portland, putting up 29 points on 12-of-16 shooting with six rebounds, five blocked shots and three steals in possibly the best game of his career.
The Timberwolves outscored the Blazers by 10 points in his 37 minutes on the court, a number that likely would have been higher were it not for his four personal fouls. McDaniels also went 5 of 6 from 3-point range, becoming the first player in league history to score at least 25 points on 75 percent shooting, make at least five 3s and have at least five blocks and three steals, per the Timberwolves.
It was fitting that his signature game came in Portland, the closest NBA city to his hometown. McDaniels put on a show for friends and family in the crowd and Crawford at the broadcast table.
He put up 11 points and four blocks in the first quarter, an emphatic start for a team that has struggled in that area. Then he unveiled how layered his offensive game has become, driving and kicking to Naz Reid for 3, scoring on acrobatic layups, hitting a one-legged, fade-away jumper over the Blazers’ Jrue Holiday and capping it all off with his trademark “Slim McNasty 3000,” bouncing the ball off the floor and throwing down a dunk as the clock ticked toward zero.
BOOOOOOM. pic.twitter.com/hOWAV5K09O
— Minnesota Timberwolves (@Timberwolves) February 25, 2026
Crawford beamed watching McDaniels finish the game with flair, perhaps a little nod to a hooper who always loved to lay on the style points. On the broadcast, Crawford likened the dunk to Kyle Lee Watson throwing it down in “Above The Rim.”
“To see it all come together tonight was just so cool because it was like, man, this is the kid we saw when he was in high school,” Crawford said. “You knew what he could be.”
Crawford has known for longer than most. In the spring of McDaniels’ rookie season in 2021, he came off the bench against the New Orleans Pelicans and scored 20 points on 8-of-9 shooting, four 3s, and three blocks. It was an eye-opening performance for the 28th pick of the 2020 draft, and Crawford called me to make sure I understood what I was watching.
“He’s the third star they’ve been looking for,” he said then.
At the time, Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns were 1A and 1B. Towns, of course, was traded before last season in a deal that brought in another high-usage star in Julius Randle. Over the years, McDaniels has had some difficulty not getting lost in the offense while Edwards and Towns/Randle took most of the shots. He has diligently worked on his game every summer, adding and refining it in an effort to break out of the 3-and-D typecast initially put on him.
Crawford spoke to him last summer, telling him the next step for him was to not let a few missed shots deter him from being aggressive.
“I know a lot of guys, they work on things, but then when it comes to the game, it’s not their role. So they’re comfortable in their role or they do their role, and then they forget some of the things they’re working on,” Crawford said.
Wolves coach Chris Finch has mandated that the team get McDaniels at least 10 shots per game. When McDaniels is involved, that generally means Minnesota’s offense is operating at an optimal level, with ball and body movement making them much harder to guard.
Crawford, one of the league’s great bucket-getters, wanted McDaniels to put all of that summer work to good use. He never expected McDaniels to become a volume scorer, but he wanted to see a little gunner in him. It was time for McDaniels to stop worrying about missing shots and start focusing on the damage he can do when he goes for it.
“I know what it’s like to have to go through those runs where you miss a bunch in a row and still have to find it,” Crawford said. “I’m gonna make it my night. I’m going to make it be good for the team.”
The big night against Portland was an important step forward in that regard. McDaniels had been underwhelming in Minnesota’s first two games out of the All-Star break, going 8 of 23 from the field and 1 of 8 from 3. He put those games behind him and delivered when the Wolves needed him against a feisty, short-handed Blazers team, to the delight of everyone.
“At the end of the day and at the heart of it all, the player who puts the work in gets better,” Finch told reporters in Portland. “It’s never been any different, no matter where we’ve been in the world. He’s an incredible worker. … He plays every day, practices every day. He’s in the gym on his workout times all the time. But he’s also got the confidence now that goes alongside all that work.”
Edwards scored 25 of his 34 points in the first half and hit a clutch 3 late in the fourth quarter, Donte DiVincenzo scored 19 points and hit five 3s and Rudy Gobert had 10 points, 19 rebounds and two blocks in his return from a one-game suspension for flagrant foul points. Gobert hit two big free throws as part of a series of big plays late for the fifth-seeded Wolves (36-23), who are just a half-game back of the third-seeded Houston Rockets (35-21) in the West.
If the Wolves are going to lock in a top-four seed, and the home-court advantage in the first round that comes with it, McDaniels will have to be a big part of that pursuit, on both ends of the court.
If he irons out the inconsistencies and continues that ascension to becoming the Wolves’ third star, you heard it from Crawford first.
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Jon Krawczynski is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Minnesota Timberwolves, the NBA and the Minnesota Vikings. Jon joined The Athletic after 16 years at The Associated Press, where he covered three Olympics, three NBA Finals, two Ryder Cups and the 2009 NFC Championship Game. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonKrawczynski
