ATLANTA — There’s a scene in Game 1 of the Atlanta Hawks-New York Knicks series that illustrates a lot of what’s happened with Dyson Daniels this season: both what makes his year slightly disappointing and what makes it remarkable.

Midway through the third quarter, he received a pass near the right baseline in a spot where a player might normally attempt a corner 3. Daniels, however, did not even look at the rim.

Instead, he whirred immediately into a handoff to the nearby CJ McCollum, using himself as a screen, and let McCollum shoot the 3 instead. McCollum splashed it, one of 11 Daniels assists that game — four of which came on “handoff” plays similar to this one, when Daniels initially was open and normally might have shot it himself. Here’s another example from earlier in the game involving Nickeil Alexander-Walker.

Daniels, alas, is not so threatening when he takes the shot himself. He made only 22 of his 117 3-point attempts this season, finishing with a tragic 18.8 percent. In doing so, he became the first player in NBA history to take at least 115 3-point attempts and still finish below the Mendoza Line. The previous low was Tony Wroten’s 21.3 percent for the Process Philadelphia 76ers in 2013-14.

This all came as a bit of a surprise. While Daniels has never been confused with prime Steph Curry, a year earlier, he shot 34.0 percent from 3 on a not-inconsequential 3.1 attempts per game. There was no real reason to expect him to suddenly become the worst-shooting guard in the league at age 22.

But he did. And as he slumped, opponents’ strategies evolved. They started giving Daniels acres of space when he caught the ball at the 3-point line, all but daring him to shoot. They started putting their center on Daniels and a forward on the Hawks’ 6-foot-8 center Onyeka Okongwu. And in response, the Hawks were essentially forced to invert their entire offense.

You might think this would have been a tragic turn of events that sidelined Daniels’ promising career, especially in our current era, where floor spacing is paramount.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Faced with professional extinction because his 3-pointer abandoned him, Daniels instead has totally reinvented his game in less than one season. He is now effectively the center on offense, and Okongwu is a forward, with Okongwu usually spacing to the corner or elbow to allow a pick-and-roll involving Daniels and a ballhandler space to cook.

“Obviously, I haven’t shot the ball how I wanted, so that’s why I’m getting guarded that way,” Daniels said recently. “But I have to find other ways to be effective.

“It’s like I’m the five now. Especially when the five is on me, I play the same role that the five does in a lot of the screening actions, up top and in handoffs and stuff like that.”

The impact numbers would tell you he’s the same guy. Daniels’ across-the-board stats (aside from 3-point percentage) are nearly identical to his Most Improved Player-winning numbers from 2024-25; a 15.5 PER this season compared to 15.6, a 54.2 percent true shooting compared to 54.5 and a 1.3 BPM compared to 1.5.

It’s new for Daniels, who mostly played point guard in his youth, but it also puts his speed on display against much slower bigs when he catches on the move.

“I like it, it’s fun,” he said. “I’ve rolled in all the actions.”

And yes, when he catches the ball wide open at the 3-point line, and there isn’t a screening opportunity nearby, there are some times when he just lets it fly anyway.

Here’s a scene from Game 3 against the Knicks where Daniels is spaced to the corner, and his defender, OG Anunoby, sells out to stop Jalen Johnson before showing only the mildest of concern that Daniels is shooting a 3 from the corner. (Alas, he should have been a bit more concerned about Okongwu trucking down the lane for a tip dunk.)

If you’re curious, the Hawks are OK with Daniels letting it fly, something that coach Quin Snyder confirmed when I asked him about it directly in March. They want Daniels to take the shot when he’s open and shoot it with confidence.

But Daniels has also noticed that the sagging bigs who are “guarding” him at the 3-point line are in no position to help on a screen, so he’s realized the value of quick-hitting handoffs to better shooters if he can find one nearby.

“That’s just how I found the way to be effective, with a cross-match especially,” Daniels said. “A lot of teams, with their [five] guarding me far off … I see cracks, and then, I get my teammates open.”

Golden State Warriors fans might recognize this particular piece of artistry. It’s something Draymond Green has done a thousand times over with Curry, especially when opponents dare Green to shoot.

Slowly but surely, it’s becoming part of Daniels’ arsenal as well — especially since the Hawks imported two movement shooters in McCollum and Alexander-Walker over the past year.

“I have watched Draymond a lot, enough to see how he does it,” Daniels said. “I should probably watch him more to see how he uses all the little tricks.”

As for Okongwu, his reinvention has arguably been just as important. This is a player who had not made a single 3-pointer in his first two pro seasons; in his sixth season, however, he tried more 3s than in the first five years combined, a whopping 5.2 per game.

To give you some idea of how often he launched, Okongwu took more 3s this regular season than Devin Booker, Quentin Grimes, Cade Cunningham or Victor Wembanyama. Only three centers (Naz Reid, Bam Adebayo and Myles Turner) let it rip from beyond the arc more often.

It’s been an essential part of the Hawks’ adjustment. Playing next to a more traditional, rim-running center (such as former starter Clint Capela) would have left Daniels in a much more tenuous situation.

“The way he shoots it, they really have to respect him, and he opens up the floor for other guys. So I think it’s really better for the guys like myself, especially like [with] CJ and Jalen, so I can get downhill, or I can keep playing in the dunker and get easy dropoffs and lobs and offensive rebounds.”

But about those 3-pointers…

Hawks people will tell you that Daniels’ shot looks good on the practice court, and if you watched him in pregame warm-ups, you’d never guess he’s shooting in the teens. Alas, his confidence hasn’t carried over into games, a trend exacerbated for a big chunk of the season by his often only taking one a night.

In the middle of the season, especially, a typical game pattern would see him let one rip in the first half, then stop taking them the rest of the game if it missed. He has 22 separate games this season where he finished 0-for-1 from 3; after an 0-for-5 outing against the San Antonio Spurs on Dec. 19, Daniels was either 0-of-0 or 0-of-1 in 13 of the next 15 games.

Encouragingly, he’s been a bit more willing to launch in the second half of the season, including 31 attempts in his last 14 games (regular season and playoffs). He’s also been a bit more accurate of late, with a lukewarm stretch of 10-of-24 shooting in the final dozen games of the regular season, allowing him to finish the season with more makes than airballs. (Baby steps.)

There’s a comfort in Daniels shooting them more, actually; one person close to the Hawks insisted to me that he’d look more or less fine if he took five a game and didn’t have to worry so much about whether the first one went in. A season earlier, he took at least five in a game on 18 occasions. This year, it’s happened just once since Christmas.

“Obviously, I’m not happy with how I’ve shot it this year, and it’s something for the offseason,” Daniels said. “But like I said, this game is a lot more than just shooting. [It’s] the defensive end. It’s about being a cutter. It’s about screening. It’s about rebounding, so I just found other ways to help us win games.”

Make no mistake: The Hawks will continue his tutelage this summer, with the help of an all-time marksman in assistant general manager Kyle Korver. Getting Daniels back to being at least a 1-in-3 proposition from the perimeter is a significant objective for a franchise that committed $100 million to him over the next four seasons. And at just 23, Daniels has a lot of developmental runway in front of him.

In the meantime, Daniels has found enough other ways to impact the game. “The Great Barrier Thief” has 10 steals in four games against New York and has been the primary defender as the Hawks have harassed Knicks star Jalen Brunson into 41.6 percent shooting through Game 4.

It may not be ideal, but the guard from Down Under has found a way to turn his game upside down. And in doing so, he’s become one of the most interesting and rarest players in the league.