With their Game 5 loss to the Denver Nuggets, the Minnesota Timberwolves season came to an end on Tuesday night. It was a disappointing end to the year for a Timberwolves squad with NBA Finals aspirations after trading for All-NBA center Rudy Gobert. A big reason why the Timberwolves lost the series was that Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray torched the Timberwolves — who were missing their top perimeter defender in Jaden McDaniels due to injury — all series long, as he averaged 27.2 points per game across five games.

So McDaniels recently dropped a truth bomb on why he was “mad” that he had to sit out the entire series, per a tweet from The Athletic's Jon Krawczynski:

“Watching Jamal Murray run around, I was mad I couldn’t chase him.”

Jaden McDaniels, 22, is in his third year in the NBA, all as a member of the Timberwolves franchise. He averaged 12.1 points, 3.9 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 0.9 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game across 79 appearances this season (all starts).

The former Washington standout shot the ball with great efficiency from behind the three-point arc in the 2022-23 campaign — McDaniels' 39.8% three-point percentage was the highest of his pro career by a wide margin.

The Nuggets are simply the better team than the Timberwolves at this juncture, so while a healthy McDaniels could have won the Timberwolves an extra game, they weren't beating the Nuggets four times out of seven. But the future is very bright in Minnesota, and with a core of Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Anthony Edwards, the Timberwolves have the potential to be contenders in the Western Conference for years to come.