‘Never seen anything like this’: Inside the genius of Dyson Daniels — an NBA ‘unicorn’

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For Dyson Daniels, defence is an art form.

The way he meticulously picks his moment, swiping at the ball in a way that seems so effortless and yet also calculated, like an impressionist painter – every stroke and every dab of colour intentional in capturing that one fleeting moment.

And with Daniels that is all it takes, one fleeting moment, for him to strike.

132 times, to be exact – quite comfortably the league-high in steals, 40 ahead of the NBA’s next best.

Meanwhile, when it comes to deflections, which is defined by the NBA as the number of times a defensive player gets their hand on the ball on a non-shot attempt, Daniels’ dominance over the rest of the league is even more pronounced.

Veteran teammate Clint Capela, who is in his 11th year in the NBA, hasn’t seen anything like it.

“It’s crazy… to me, I’ve never experienced a defender that good at the beginning of the season,” Capela told reporters after a training session in late November.

“I mean, I’ve told him multiple times I’ve never seen anything like this in my whole life… seven, eight steals… I’ve never seen it.”

Brad Rowland, who covers the Hawks for the Locked on Podcast Network, described Daniels as a “unicorn of a player defensively”.

“It’s a rare combination of a guy who can get those steals, get those deflections and also play this kind of solid one-on-one defence that you want a guy to play and do it without fouling,” he said.

So, how did Daniels become such a master of deception?

Well, in the final instalment of foxsports.com.au’s four-part series on Australia’s breakout NBA star, Daniels answers that very question by breaking down just how he guards some of the league’s most dynamic scorers on a nightly basis.

THE ADVICE FROM DAD THAT HELPED MAKE DYSON THE DEFENDER HE IS TODAY

But first, to really understand where Daniels’ defensive tendencies have come from, you have take a few steps back.

Back to the courts of Bendigo. Back to where it all began, and back to the lessons from a local legend who just so happened to also be Daniels’ father.

Ricky Daniels, who went to college at North Carolina State and won two national MVP titles with the Bendigo Braves while playing professionally in Australia, always made strong defence a feature of his game.

So, naturally, when it came to teach his sons the fundamentals of the game, the emphasis would start on defence and build from there.

“It can win games whenever you’re not playing well offensively,” Ricky told foxsports.com.au.

“You give yourself a chance at least. But if you can’t play defence and your offence is bad, you have no hope.

“So those are the things that you try to get them to realise and I think all three boys – Kai, Dyson and Dash – were always willing to play defence and sacrifice at that end of the floor.”

That, of course, is moreso referring to an attitude. Specifically that all three boys, Dyson included, bought into defence as the pillar of playing the game the right way.

But applying that attitude into in-game scenarios is a different story entirely and for Daniels, it was something that he has “always” been able to do at a high level according to Ricky.

“He’s just grown and as you get older and as you get smarter and more experienced you just get better at things. But he’s always had that as a young kid, on the football field and the basketball (court),” Ricky said.

“It was always hard for the kids to bring the ball up against him or have the ball around him because (of) his instincts, his hand-eye coordination.

“I think he probably had that as a gift but you’ve also got to have that IQ to be able to use that gift and I think he has that ability to understand how to use it as well. But as a kid he’s always been that way as well.”

Even when Daniels was a 15-year-old playing against grown men in the NBL1, Ricky recalled the way opposition players would be hesitant to bring the ball up against him.

And now, he’s having the same impact on the biggest names in the league, with Ricky pointing towards two games early in Daniels’ NBA career when he stole the ball while guarding LeBron James and Luka Doncic.

“You can tell that the guys are hesitant to dribble the ball around him much,” Ricky said.

“I think those are the games that probably stood out the most and probably put things in perspective on how well he does play defence because if you looked at the way that they did things after that, they were very a lot more careful around him when he’s guarding them.”

Put simply, Daniels changes the game-planning approach of opposition teams. Even when Lakers coach JJ Redick was asked what worried him about the Hawks ahead of their game in December, the first two words out of his mouth were Dyson Daniels, followed by a smile.

“Just because we’re in a funk offensively and he’s so disruptive,” Redick added.

“We have to have an awareness with him.”

James and Doncic are just two of the more high-profile names to fall victim to the NBA’s premier pickpocket, whose intellect and defensive instincts rank among the best in the league.

Instinct isn’t necessarily something you can teach. But again, it is something Ricky stressed to his sons, regardless of which sport they were playing.

“You’ve got to play before the play,” Ricky would tell them.

“The only way you can do that is to study what’s going on with the team and how players like to play and what they like to do, that way you can see things coming before they come.”

“I’d say the majority of players play within the moment,” he added.

“They react rather than plan on what might be happening. So I think that’s where Dyson’s probably better, because he seems to study his opponents and study what the possibilities are on that floor.”

What exactly does that actually look like? Well, it’s best to let Daniels – one of the best defensive minds in the game – explain.

INSIDE THE MIND OF DYSON… AND HOW HE DEFENDS THE NBA’S BIGGEST STARS

Kyrie Irving had just brought the ball up past half court when Daniels picked him up.

There is a split second of hesitation as Irving sizes Daniels up, staring him right in the face – this, an eight-time All-Star and NBA champion.

There are few other players in the league who make defenders more nervous in one-on-one situations, with a seemingly endless bag of tricks at his disposal – from simple crossovers to the left-handed floater he used to sink the Nuggets on the buzzer last year.

This time around, Irving quickly drives to the right. Daniels was expecting it.

“He prefers to go right,” the Hawks guard said, breaking down one possession in the second quarter of Atlanta’s 129-119 loss to Dallas earlier this season.

“So, (I’m) shading him left a little bit, but knowing that the screen’s probably going to come on my left side. So I’m going to have to get into his right hip.

“It’s just about squaring him up, keeping him in front and then if I get the opportunity to get into his hip and put him on the back foot, then that’s what I want to do here.”

But Irving is able to get the advantage, at least initially he is. First, he gets his hips past Daniels.

“As an offensive player, that’s what you want to do,” said Daniels.

“But I think, one thing for me I like to do is the arm swipes.”

It is one of the many strengths of Daniels’ defensive game, and in some ways even with his success this season in Atlanta it remains underrated.

Because while he is able to use 6-foot-11 wingspan and anticipatory skills to get steals and deflections, some of Daniels’ best and most important work is the job he does using his physicality and strength to stay with defenders and make them uncomfortable all the way up to the basket.

That was the case in this possession against Irving.

“If they’re dribbling with their right hand and they have their left hand on your hip kind of shading you, (what I want to do) is get my right hand over their left arm,” Daniels explained.

“I can kind of propel myself forward a little bit and at least get level with you where I can contest you at the rim. And a guy like Kyrie who’s such an elite finisher, really good at drawing fouls and stuff like that.

“He’s hard because he can use that step back. He can get to his pullback and mid-range shot, which is really effective. But for me, if I can stay level with him and at his hip and wall him up at the rim and make it a tough shot, that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Daniels, who is given the toughest defensive assignment of a nightly basis in Atlanta, said Irving is “one of the harder ones” because “there’s not much you can take away”.

“He doesn’t really have a weakness,” added Daniels.

Irving ended up scoring 32 points in that game but when he was matched up against Daniels he was made to work for every single one of his buckets.

“Yeah, for sure,” Irving said when asked by NBA Australia’s Leigh Ellis if he felt Daniels’ impact on the defensive end.

“I think everyone who’s been going up against him feels it.”

From a former MVP like Russell Westbrook to superstar guards in Donovan Mitchell and Jalen Brunson, they all feel it and it has earned Daniels a reputation as one of the league’s best lockdown defenders.

Whether it is his ability to stay in front, his active hands or his tenacity to fight through screens, Daniels is a menace on the perimeter.

And, perhaps most impressive, is the way he leans into the physicality in his game without finding himself in foul trouble. Even when it comes to contesting at the rim, Daniels is able to force tough shots while going backwards which, again, means fewer fouls are called against him.

“I like to think that I’m smart,” Daniels said.

“I just don’t foul as a defender. I don’t do dumb fouls. Being able to be physical and not foul is a fine line. But I think I’ve figured that out.

“I figured out what the refs are looking for this year and what I can’t do. And for me, it’s just, I want to keep them in front and make them take tough twos, but it’s not going to happen. So, contesting at the rim is a big, big thing I think I’ve improved on this year.”

Naturally, Daniels’ background as a former Australian Rules football player has helped him in some capacity when it comes to guarding with physicality, and specifically being able to “absorb bumps”.

Although for Daniels, who had the potential to be a “very good AFL player” according to former coach Josh Bourke, the benefits are more apparent in the way he sees the floor.

“I’d like to think of it as more about reading the game defensively, being in the right spot, knowing where the ball is going to go,” Daniels said.

And more often than not Daniels is in the right spot and does know where the ball is going to go, which again isn’t just some lucky coincidence.

Just like it isn’t a coincidence that Daniels knows Irving prefers to go right and that Brunson is always going to try get to the free-throw line or to his mid-range pull-up.

Of course, scouting opposition players and knowing their tendencies isn’t necessarily anything groundbreaking. All the best defenders in the league do it.

But for someone like Daniels, who has made defence an art form, it is also important to remember that it takes time – or in this case hours of film and practice – for an artist to perfect their craft.

And Daniels’ masterpiece isn’t even complete yet. In fact, at just 21 years old, in many ways he is still just getting started, which is particularly exciting for the Hawks given the impact he has already had.

HOW DYSON IS CHANGING THE HAWKS’ CULTURE… EVEN WHEN NOT ON THE COURT

It didn’t take long for Atlanta to see the kind of impact Daniels could have. The way he could help this team, which had the fourth-worst defensive rating last season, start to take pride on that side of the ball.

How he could help change the way the Hawks were viewed across the league and the way they viewed themselves and what they were capable of.

It’s not that he was going to single-handedly change their playing identity entirely.

As Lauren Williams put it, with or without Daniels, the Hawks are never going to be an “elite powerhouse on the defensive end”.

“But Dyson certainly makes that more of a possibility than it was before,” Williams, who covers the Hawks for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, added.

And even if that never happens, perhaps Hawks coach Quin Snyder had the most realistic evaluation of the impact Daniels has already had on his playing group, telling reporters before their win against Boston that the Australian has made Atlanta “respectable” defensively.

“And good at times,” Snyder added.

He has given them a reason to believe. He has shown them the way. Even the players who weren’t part of the rotation, like rookie Seth Lundy – who was later released in December – saw in Daniels something and someone to aspire to.

“Just watching him defensively, it opened my eyes a little bit,” Lundy said at the team’s media day according to Hawks.com beat writer Kevin Chouinard.

“If I could do that, I’ll be on the court 100 per cent.”

“You don’t see stuff like that,” added Lundy, recalling Daniels doing slides with 35-pound plates in the pre-season.

“It’s a reason why he’s a good defender and he’s always working on his hips, working on ways to get better… and just watching that is a great thing for me because I know I could be that type of defender.”

Even from the first day Daniels arrived in Atlanta, Rowland noted there has been nothing but “universal praise” for the Australian.

And sure, it is easy to just write that off as what you would expect for any player in the league regardless of how talented they are. After all, it’s not as if their own coaches or teammates are openly going to speak poorly about them.

But this still felt different to Rowland. He had been around this team long enough to know when the comments from players and coaches are more genuine.

“I mean, they go out of their way to talk about him in a way that you don’t often hear people be talked about defensively,” Rowland said, adding that Daniels’ intensity on the defensive end “rubs off (on) everybody”.

The numbers bear it out too. Again, as Williams said, the Hawks are not going to be some defensive powerhouse, even with Daniels, but there has been a step in the right direction this season.

The Hawks as a team have gone from averaging 7.5 steals per game (eighth in the NBA) to 10.4 (second) and while Daniels is obviously the prime culprit, Johnson (1.6) and Young (1.3) are also still finding ways to be disruptive on that end of the floor.

Atlanta has also improved its defensive rating from 118.4 (fourth-worst) to 113.1 (15th-best) and is conceding 50.2 points in the paint (eighth most) compared to 53.7 last season (fifth-most).

While it doesn’t all come back to Daniels alone, there is still something to be said about the tenacity he plays with on the defensive end. It’s infectious, and it’s bringing out the best in his teammates.

You don’t have to look any further than Atlanta’s 136-107 blowout win against Toronto, where the Hawks recorded 22 steals — the most the franchise has had in a game since 1997.

And they did that all without the NBA’s steals leader. Although Hawks coach Quin Snyder later said in his post-game press conference that Daniels was there “in spirit”.

“People talk about Dyson’s impact defensively to the extent that our whole team is embracing that,” Snyder added.

That in itself is proof of a defensive identity being forged; of a player shifting the goalposts and changing the culture. Not that you can put it all on one person alone.

“Because no one can change your culture that way defensively as a perimeter player on their own,” Rowland said.

“But I think you already see the impact of that.”

READ THE REST OF THE DYSON DANIELS SERIES

PART 1: How Dyson’s stunning NBA rise began with a hardline rule from his dad

PART 2: How Dyson’s ‘out of nowhere’ Boomers statement sparked ‘uncomfortable’ call

PART 3: Inside the ‘shock’ trade that changed the trajectory of his career