Former Washington Huskies standout Jaden McDaniels recorded the third 30-point game of his career on Wednesday night, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Minnesota Timberwolves from losing 116-115 to the Los Angeles Lakers at the Target Center.
The 6-foot-9 Federal Way, Washington native and first-round pick in the 2020 NBA draft scored nine points in the fourth quarter, including his third 3-pointer of the game with 1:38 remaining to bring the Timberwolves within a possession, 114-111, marking the second time this season the former Husky has scored a trio of shots from behind the arc.
McDaniels, who added 7 rebounds and an assist in the one-point loss at home, shot 11-of-19 from the floor and knocked down all five free throw attempts against the Lakers, including a pair early in the fourth to slowly chip away at a double-digit deficit.
Although the former Federal Way High School star and five-star recruit in the 2019 class finished second to Julius Randle, who scored a game-high 33 points in the Timberwolves’ second home defeat to start the 2025-26 season, McDaniels had two chances to score with just over seven minutes left that could have tilted the final result in Minnesota’s favor.
Following a Lakers turnover at the 7:48 mark in the fourth quarter, the 2024 NBA All-Defensive Second Team honoree missed a driving dunk, gathered his own offensive rebound, and then missed a shot from inside 10 feet on his second attempt that Lakers forward Jake LaRavia corralled for a defensive rebound during a near two-minute scoreless drought for both teams.
McDaniels scored his final two points of the game with 49.8 seconds left off an assist from guard Mike Conley to keep the team within a basket, 114-113, before Randle put Minnesota ahead on the following possession. However, the Timberwolves pair couldn’t prevent Lakers guard Austin Reaves from knocking down a 12-foot runner at the buzzer to give Los Angeles its third win of the season.
After an up-and-down freshman season that saw the power forward average 13 points and 5.8 rebounds per game in 2019-20 under former UW coach Mike Hopkins, McDaniels declared for the 2020 NBA draft after making 21 starts and 31 total appearances for his hometown school.
On draft night, the Lakers selected McDaniels with the No. 28 overall pick before trading the Seattle-area native to the Oklahoma City Thunder — a cruel irony given the organization moved from the Emerald City to Oklahoma — for Dennis Schröder before he was eventually traded again to Minnesota.
Ever since, the Timberwolves have seen the former five-star grow into a consistent force on both ends of the court, as he showed once again Thursday night.
McDaniels had scored 30 points twice in his career coming into the game, both of which last season at home against the Portland Trailblazers in a 114-98 victory and two months later against the Lakers to lift Minnesota to a 116-104 win in game three of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, which ended up tilting the series in the Timberwolves’ favor for good.