In his first season with the Atlanta Hawks, Dyson Daniels has emerged as one of the best defenders in basketball. The Great Barrier Thief has dominated the NBA with his pick-pocketing abilities, averaging a whopping 3.0 steals across 50 appearances.
De’Aaron Fox and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the league in total steals last season, tied for 150 steals each. Meanwhile, Daniels has already notched 149 steals at the All-Star Break.
Steals leader for the 23-24 season: 150 steals
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) February 14, 2025
Dyson Daniels at the All-Star break: 149 steals pic.twitter.com/7zWEBBMUK3
Daniels will almost certainly earn the first All-Defensive selection of his career. At just 21 years old, the Australian combo guard has already helped transform Atlanta’s defense in his first year as a Hawk.
Last season, the Hawks had the fourth-worst defensive rating in the NBA. Atlanta now owns the No. 15 defense in the league, which marks the team’s first top-15 defense since the 2016-17 season – before Trae Young had even been drafted. Daniels holds the strongest individual defensive rating of anyone on the team aside from Mouhamed Gueye, who has played in eight total games for the Hawks.
Atlanta took some time to figure things out on defense early in the season, but Daniels’ integration into his new team’s system gradually seemed to right the ship. Since the beginning of December, the Hawks have boasted a top-12 defensive rating. The Aussie is one of just two players since 2014 to post at least 10 games of five or more steals in a season, and he has accomplished this feat with 27 games still left for the Hawks.
Before the break, Daniels was also heating up for the Hawks on offense. Over his last 15 games, he has averaged 16.3 points, 6.7 boards, 4.9 assists, and 2.7 steals on 52.6% shooting from the field and 38.9% shooting from three.
Atlanta has found the perfect long-term backcourt mate for Ice Trae, and Hawks fans can expect the team to sign Daniels to a long-term extension this summer.
Dyson Daniels is on an all-time great trajectory as a defender
Daniels has the potential makings of an all-time defender, and he is a heavy favorite to win the NBA Hustle Award. Atlanta’s talented ball hawk is set to shatter the NBA record for total deflections and deflections per game in a season. He has averaged a record-setting 6.1 deflections per game, and he needs nine more deflections to break the record Robert Covington set in the 2017-18 season.
Last year, Alex Caruso won the Hustle Award while averaging a league-best 3.7 deflections. Daniels is nearly doubling that mark. To put Daniels’ brilliance into further perspective, Covington averaged 3.9 deflections the year he set his soon-to-be-broken record of 315 deflections.
Daniels began his third NBA season as the league’s best-kept secret, but the basketball world has become quite aware of the Hawks’ defensive juggernaut. Atlanta will return from the All-Star Break with a 26-29 record and a slight edge over the Miami Heat for the No. 8 seed.
While a top-six seed and automatic playoff berth is still within reach, the Hawks should at least aim to stay within the Eastern Conference’s top eight seeds to avoid a 9-vs-10 play-in game. Thankfully for the Hawks, they have played their finest basketball against the cream of the crop in the East.
Against the East’s top three seeds, Atlanta has gone 6-4 with two wins over each of the Cavs, Celtics, and Knicks. Daniels averaged 2.5 steals across those ten contests, and he shot an unbelievable 61.4% from the field in three outings against Boston with 19.7 points per game.
With the Hawks right in the thick of the playoff race, Daniels will look to finish the season strong.