first round of the playoffs <\/a>before succumbing in six games, despite trading away their franchise point guard in January.<\/p>\nDaniels, back home in Australia on his brief off-season, remains his own critic. \u201cI\u2019m pretty disappointed with how the season went to be honest \u2013 and it\u2019s from an individual standpoint, I think our team really took a step,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t shoot the ball how I wanted to this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
He still found ways to be effective. Rather than take shots, Daniels would increasingly hand the ball to teammates, then obstruct the defence to given them an opportunity to shoot. It was a formula that seemed to work. \u201cWe found a lot of success in that as well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
In the NBA, however, a single strategy is quickly exposed. And so Daniels leaned on his cascade of counters. \u201cSometimes when I\u2019m the playmaker, [the defence is] so far off I can just see everything and play free. A few teams will try to take that away and put a lot of pressure on me, and that\u2019s when I can become more of a downhill playmaker and get to the rim and find teammates that way,\u201d he says. \u201cI think my playmaking really took a step this year, it\u2019s just obviously [improving] the shooting will open everything up, so that\u2019s going to be a big focus for me this off-season.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Daniels\u2019 shooting develops, he could become one of basketball\u2019s elite two-way players. Yet no longer does every road lead to the three-point line. Amid the emergence of the relentless, physical defences in Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Detroit, stopping shots \u2013 not just taking them \u2013 is in vogue.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s Daniels\u2019 bread and butter, having been named to the NBA\u2019s All-Defensive Team last season in a year he also won the league\u2019s Most Improved Player award. Not long after he signed a contract that will see his annual salary rise from US$7.7m ($10.6m) to US$25m ($34.5m) in July.<\/p>\n
This lofty income bracket is reserved for only the most elite in Australian sport, including Formula One driver Oscar Piastri, golfer Cameron Smith and Daniels\u2019 Boomers teammate Josh Giddey. Shooter or not, Daniels is valued handsomely.<\/p>\n
Four-time All-Star DeMarcus Cousins, visiting Australia for the NBA House promotion in Port Melbourne this week, describes Daniels\u2019 worth succinctly: \u201cWhat he does on the defensive side of the ball, he\u2019s already carved out his niche in his league, so everything else is just a plus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniels first pay cheque on his new deal arrives in two months. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have that guaranteed money and security, but it comes with a lot of other things too, a lot of responsibility and decision making,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He wants to help find his parents the right house, and continue to build his share and property portfolio. Not even a personal briefing from his Boomers teammate and tech-bro Matthew Dellavedova, however, managed to steer him towards more alternative asset classes. \u201cI\u2019m bit iffy on Bitcoin,\u201d Daniels says. \u201cOnce, he [Dellavedova] got a hold of me, he sat me down for a good hour and gave me the presentation, so I\u2019m a bit iffy on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida has been the focus of Daniels\u2019 real estate investments so far. He says he hasn\u2019t looked extensively at opportunities in Australia, but is aware of the changes to negative gearing in Tuesday\u2019s budget. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to look at that carefully,\u201d he says. \u201cBut yeah, I mean, it\u2019s all risk and reward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He is a shooting guard that doesn\u2019t often shoot. A wing deployed less for lift than pressure. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-668619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}