Post#175 » by Nick K » Wed Sep 28, 2022 11:56 pm
More from "The Athletic" Jon K. on Jaden McD.
"Rather than heading home to Seattle or moving for the summer to an NBA offseason hotbed like Los Angeles, Houston or Miami, McDaniels chose to spend a lot of his time in Minneapolis, utilizing the Wolves’ training facility and working out with friends and teammates Naz Reid and Nathan Knight, among others.
To get an idea of what kind of player the Wolves think he can become, Boylan showed McDaniels film of Luka Dončić and Kawhi Leonard. McDaniels doesn’t have the same body type as either of them, but Boylan wanted him to see how they played at a pace that was all their own. McDaniels didn’t need to be in a hurry when the ball found him, Boylan told him. He showed him how Dončić and Leonard never rush things, how they are always in control and use that poise to create opportunities for themselves and their teammates.
McDaniels needed to slow down and use his height to survey the court and find the openings. He needed to see how the corner is always open when he attacks the rim. They focused on McDaniels’ footwork, getting him to understand the nuances of setting up a move with a gather step first, a little addition that gives him a little extra time to make a decision while in motion.
McDaniels also prefers to jump off of his right foot when he’s attacking the rim. Boylan emphasized getting more comfortable going off of the left so he can be more unpredictable and effective near the rim.
Boylan also put a lot of emphasis on finding a consistent arc for McDaniels’ jumper. For the Wolves to maximize their new-look starting five with McDaniels at small forward and Gobert at center, they need McDaniels to be a reliable catch-and-shoot guy, both in the corners and above the break. He has shown potential there, hitting 50 percent of his 20 3s in the playoffs against Memphis, including five in Game 6.
The Wolves determined that McDaniels’ optimal shooting arc is 47 degrees. Boylan loaded on his phone HomeCourt, an app developed in part by Steve Nash to track shooting, and used it to record McDaniels’ jumpers. The app calculates the arc on every shot, keeps track of makes and misses and produces video cuts. Boylan sent those to McDaniels after workouts so he could watch himself later in the evening. At the start of the summer, McDaniels was shooting a flatter shot with a 45-degree arc. Three weeks into the workouts, the arc was up to 47 percent, right where they want it.
“He’s really emblematic of what we want the culture to be,” Boylan said. “Competitive, hard-working, high standards. That’s what we want out of our guys and he brings it.”
But it wasn’t just the skill work that McDaniels focused on this summer. He was listed at 6-9 and 185 pounds last season, with legs that didn’t quite enter the Corey Brewer pantheon of spindles, and certainly could benefit from some added mass. He also wanted to continue to work on honing exactly how his body moves to maximize performance and reduce the risk of injury.
When McDaniels was preparing for the draft in 2020, his agent, Nima Namakian, lined him up with P3 in Santa Barbara, Calif., an analytics-driven training center for elite athletes. It was there that the quiet McDaniels met lead performance specialist Jon Flake, who helped him start to work on his body and prepare it for the NBA grind.
McDaniels has been returning every summer to work with the athletic trainers and sports science experts there to refine his movements and build strength so he can remain quick enough to guard perimeter players and strong enough to fight for rebounds in the frontcourt. Flake has worked with dozens of NBA players and said McDaniels stands out from a physical standpoint.
“I’ve been working in this field for over 10 years and at P3 for almost seven, and I haven’t seen many guys like him,” Flake said. “It’s this unique combination of crazy length and explosiveness, but explosiveness that’s on tap immediately.”
P3 charts and measures an array of physical attributes for players. Flake said McDaniels’ 29-inch standing vertical leap is “well above average for NBA players and very good for his position.” McDaniels has been categorized as a “stiff flexor,” meaning he does not need a big range of motion to reach the top of his jump quickly. That correlates to higher shot block rates in games. The measurements also show that McDaniels is far above average in side-to-side movement for his position, giving him a rare combination of elite vertical and lateral movement. Perfect for locking up an opponent’s best scorer.
“There really is no glaring hole for him,” Flake said."
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Truly great stuff. The competence of the new Wolves staff blows me away. I'm so conditioned to incompetence.
I'm overjoyed thinking about our future.
WC finals? It's a lofty and reachable goal. Maybe we finally get rewarded as fans. Nobody deserves it more than we do. Especially the many os us that have been there since day one.
AARROOOO!