Jaden McDaniels Throws More Shade at Nuggets
The timer on the 2025-26 NBA oven has gone off *DING* and the Denver Nuggets are the latest team whose season has officially been cooked. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Timberwolves are moving on to the second round of the NBA Playoffs for the third-straight season .
Much of the MN Timberwolves’ success against the Nuggets was thanks to 25-year-old lockdown defender and blossoming offensive weapon, Jaden McDaniels .
Not only did the former Washington standout provide all the off-court drama we needed for this series, when he called out Denver players one-by-one as “bad defenders”, but he then backed it up on the court with some of the best and most consistent basketball we’ve seen Jaden play during his six-year NBA career.
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MN Timberwolves vs Nuggets — The Jaden McDaniels series
When the dust settled on the MN Timberwolves’ first round playoff series, Jaden McDaniels was averaging postseason career highs in points (17.8), rebounds (6.8), and assists (2.7) — to go along with a 114 offensive rating and 111 defensive rating.
There are a lot of reasons why the Minnesota Timberwolves were able to overcome the loss of Anthony Edwards , Donte DiVincenzo , and eventually Ayo Dosunmu , and still find a way to beat the Nuggets in four out of six games .
Obviously, Rudy Gobert grabbed the attention of even his biggest haters this series, given the way he played defense on Nikola Jokic, arguably the best player in the National Basketball Association.
Ayo Dosunmu carried the Wolves to victory in Game 4 , after Ant and DiVo went down. And in Game 6, with all three of those guys out, head coach Chris Finch finally unleashed second-year guard/wing, Terrence Shannon Jr. , who went for 24 points Friday, in Minnesota’s series-clinching win.
Jaden McDaniels fires parting shot at Denver Nuggets
But nobody was bigger than Jaden McDaniels, who introduced the rest of the basketball world to everything MN Timberwolves fans already knew, not just about his game, but his personality too. Of course, national media is still figuring him out.
Like on Friday, when NBA Today’s Malika Andrews (ESPN) asked him about the “rivalry” between the Wolves and Nuggets. To that, Jaden passive-aggressively pondered whether Denver is a legitimate rival for Minnesota, after they’ve eliminated the Nuggets in two of the last three postseasons.
McDaniels: “Yeah, you could say it’s a rivalry. It’s up there now. I don’t know if we can anymore, after we beat them two or three times, but it’s cool.”
Andrews: “You’re saying that they can’t be in your class anymore because you guys have won the last two series?”
McDaniels: “Basically.”
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