Preseason games are supposed to tell you nothing. This one told me Jaden McDaniels is done being the fourth-most-interesting name in his own starting five.
Minnesota walked into Madison Square Garden on Monday night, put its real starters on the floor against New York’s real starters, and won going away, 122-104. The number that explains it is 18 made threes on 34 attempts against a Knicks team that managed eight. The name that explains it, for once, is Jaden McDaniels, the long wing next to Edwards who spent the evening walking into any matchup he wanted.
Chris Finch ran his first unit out for the first extended look of the preseason, with one exception. Jonathan Kuminga sat, and Finch said why before tip.
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Monday it was only Kuminga getting the cautious treatment, with Cody Williams sliding into his spot alongside Ball, Edwards, McDaniels and Gobert.
McDaniels stopped waiting his turn
McDaniels finished with 22 points on 8-of-12 shooting, 4-of-5 from three, in 24 minutes, per the CBS Sports box score. More than the raw line, it was how he got there. Every time New York put a smaller defender on him, he went and collected.
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McDaniels has spent most of his career as the guy who takes the hard defensive assignment and waits for his offense to come to him. On Monday he went and took it. When Landry Shamet drew the matchup, McDaniels put a shoulder in his chest and got to the rim without a counter. That is the difference between a complementary wing and a third option, and Minnesota’s ceiling depends on which one he decides to be. Across the preseason he has not just been efficient, he has been the Wolves’ most efficient scorer, and the volume has climbed right along with it.
The sample is tiny and it is the preseason; I am not pretending otherwise. But hunting a mismatch is a deliberate choice he has made, not a shooting fluke you regress away, and he is making it.
The second quarter is where New York lost the thread
For a quarter and a half this was a real game. Josh Hart gave the Knicks their only lead of the night, a single point in the first, per the Associated Press recap. Minnesota answered with an 8-0 run in the final minutes of the opening quarter to lead 29-20. New York punched back in the second with a 10-0 run of its own that tied the game 41-41 with 5:34 left in the half.
Then the Wolves closed the half on a 21-9 tear and the night was effectively over. Edwards had 20 at the break on 6-of-11 shooting, 4-of-6 from deep. McDaniels had 19. Minnesota led 62-50 at intermission and pushed the margin as high as 20 after the break. I rewound that closing stretch once, just to watch Edwards’ release again, because every attempt looked like it was in before it left his hand.
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Edwards finished with 26 points on 8-of-16, 5-of-8 from three, in 25 minutes. He and McDaniels made more threes between them than the entire Knicks roster did. New York actually won the paint, 42 to 36, and lost by 18 anyway, because Minnesota turned a competent first half into a shooting clinic and never looked back.
LaMelo’s night was the useful kind of ugly
LaMelo Ball put up 10 points and seven assists in 22 minutes, and he also coughed it up five times on 3-of-7 shooting. The assists are the encouraging part. The giveaways are the point.
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He is right that it was a test, and he is right that New York is the team to administer it. Jalen Brunson, Hart, OG Anunoby and Miles McBride make up one of the nastier perimeter defenses Ball will see all year, and five turnovers against that look is information, not an indictment. You would rather he get bodied into those mistakes in October than discover the problem in a January game that counts. The handle and the vision are not in question; the decision-making against elite ball pressure is the thing to watch, and on Monday he got a full dose of it.
The bench, the duds and the rotation math
Finch kept everyone on a short leash, none of his starters past Edwards’ 25 minutes, and New York did the same, capping Brunson and the rest of its first unit at 22. That evens the sample and makes the margin a little more honest than a typical exhibition blowout.
Ayo Dosunmu had the best non-star night of the group, 11 points on 3-of-6 with three steals and a plus-13 in 20 minutes, and the got into it with Anunoby after chasing down a block. Zyon Pullin quietly stuffed the sheet with eight points, three assists and three steals without a turnover. Joan Beringer, the rookie center, gave Finch five points, four boards and a block in 14 minutes of credible backup-five work behind Gobert, who scored two but dished three. Not everyone helped the case. Bones Hyland went 3-of-9 and bricked all three of his threes, which is a rough night to have when the backup minutes behind Edwards and Ball are a live competition. Cody Williams, who started in Kuminga’s place, finished a modest six points on 2-of-3, but his night was about defense, and he held up, taking a turn on Brunson in isolation rather than hiding from it. Minnesota turned it over 19 times and surrendered 15 points off those giveaways; the 18-point margin swallowed it, but a regular-season opponent files that sloppiness away.
Here is what separates this from the exhibition in Miami that the roster bubble won on its own: the players who will decide Minnesota’s season actually played, so the takeaways are real ones. McDaniels looks like a third scorer. Edwards’ jumper is still an event. Gobert and the bench bigs did their jobs.
What it means
The Wolves open the regular season October 21 at Miami, and this was the last meaningful dress rehearsal for the starting group before it counts. What I will be watching is simple: whether McDaniels keeps hunting mismatches when the defense is trying and the result is on the line, and whether LaMelo’s turnover number comes down as the reps against real defenses pile up. The rest of the rotation picture, Kuminga included, resolves itself once everyone is dressed.
If this is who McDaniels is now, Minnesota’s ceiling just got taller.
