If you had the opportunity to enjoy this player on your team, you definitely know who I’m talking about…

Of course, it’s Dyson Daniels.

The Australian guard has averaged 36.9 fps per game, only missing 5 games this season. Personally, this guy has been a no-brainer for me, I picked him up the first day of the season and I didn’t let him go since.

Fantasy data

He has been an uncontested starter for the Hawks, with an initial price of $7.5 in NBA Fantasy: Salary Cap edition, but finishing at $8.7 and a rough 18% selection by managers. The next most-selected player costing less than $10 – ignoring Zach Edey, who was an early-season sensation and was picked up by many players who didn’t keep playing – is Christian Braun, with a 15.3% selection rate.

In terms of numbers, Braun averaged 29.2 fps per game, being less consistent than “The Great Barrier Thief”, but proving to be also a great pickup for your fantasy team. If the Most Improved Player award was directed to non-1st draft pick players, these two would definitely be in the top of the list this 2024/25 NBA season.

Some NBA facts

With his 3.01 steals per game, Dyson Daniels has finished 11th overall in historical NBA single season leaders for this stat. Some facts for this stat:

• There’s 0 players from this current decade in the top-250 for steals per game list.
• There’s only 1 player in the top-100 from the previous 2010 decade: Chris Paul with 2.48 steals per game in the 2013/14 season.
• Dyson Daniels has doubled his steals per game, from 1.4 -> 3.01 by averaging 11.5 more playing minutes per game.

Deflections

A deflection is defined as

The number of times a defensive player or team gets their hand on the ball on a non-shot attempt

Dyson has revived this stat because he has averaged 5.8 deflections per game, so here are other facts regarding this stat:

• Atlanta Hawks finished 4th overall in this list, where Dyson Daniels represented almost 31% of these deflections.
• Some previous leaders of this stat that allows you to visualize how great this season was in perspective:

Season	Player	Deflections per game
2023/24	Caruso	3.8
2022/23	VanVleet	3.8
2021/22	Murray	4
2020/21	VanVleet	3.8

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That was it for this first post, let me know if you like these advanced stats and if you would prefer these kind of players to be selected as the most improved player, instead of current NBA all-stars.

For reference, you can find more info on the stats here:

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/daniedy01.html: THE 2024/25 Fantasy Player https://www.nba.com/stats/players/hustle-leaders: THE 2024/25 Fantasy Player