The first time Dyson Daniels suited up for the Atlanta Hawks, it was a preseason game against the Indiana Pacers. The 21-year-old acquitted himself well, scoring 14 points on 5-for-8 shooting with three assists in 21 minutes and showing signs that his size, length and activity might make him an ideal complement for Trae Young — a transcendent playmaker with the ball in his hands but a frequent target on the other end of the floor.

“We have a plan defensively as a team, what we want to take away,” Daniels told reporters after the preseason affair. “And every team’s different. [The Pacers] have so many good individual players, and a guy like [Pascal] Siakam, you want to take away his right hand. A guy like [Tyrese] Haliburton, you want to take away his step back.”

The game-plan chatter and know-your-personnel specifics, though, only served to elide and obscure the secret truth pounding inside the Aussie’s heart: What Dyson Daniels wants to take away most, from every offensive player, is the ball. And if we’ve learned anything in the opening month of the 2024-25 NBA season, it’s this: He’s really, really good at doing it.

If you’re one of the masochistic sickos who kept tabs on the chaos-racked Pelicans over the past few seasons — [waves at you warmly] — you already knew that the 6-foot-8 Daniels could sit down and guard. Chosen eighth overall in the 2022 NBA Draft out of the now-defunct G League Ignite incubator program, Daniels showed impressive flashes of havoc-wreaking in New Orleans, ranking near the top of the NBA in steals and deflections per minute last season. But with Herb Jones firmly ensconced as the top stopper in the starting lineup, with Brandon Ingram, CJ McCollum and Trey Murphy III all in line for starters’ minutes on the perimeter, and with the Pelicans looking to add another ball-handler and shot creator to one of the NBA’s worst crunch-time offenses, New Orleans shipped Daniels — along with veteran big men Larry Nance Jr. and Cody Zeller, and two future first-round picks — to Atlanta for Dejounte Murray.

The Pels have yet to reap the hoped-for benefits of the deal; Murray hasn’t played since breaking his left hand on opening night. Atlanta, however, has seen the jewel of its return pay immediate dividends. Daniels has quickly cemented himself not only as a starter alongside Young in the backcourt for Quin Snyder’s revamped club, but as the NBA’s premier pickpocket: “The Great Barrier Thief” enters the Hawks’ Monday matchup with the Dallas Mavericks leading the NBA in steals and deflections. By, like, a lot.

• Daniels is averaging 3.2 steals per game, a full steal ahead of Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams and Houston’s Tari Eason, putting him on pace to be just the eighth player since the NBA started tracking steals in 1973-74 to average three thefts a game — and the first to do it in 31 years.

• Daniels has logged an obscene 102 deflections in 15 games, which not only leads the league; it’s 37 more than the player in second place, De’Aaron Fox, who has played 138 more minutes than Daniels. The gap between first-place Daniels and second-place Fox is the same as the gap between Fox and 76ers forward Caleb Martin … in 99th.

• Daniels has secured a steal on 4.4% of opponents’ possessions and has blocked a shot on 2.7% of their offensive trips. According to Stathead, only three players had ever posted a steal rate above 4% and a block rate above 2% before this season: Scottie Pippen and Nate McMillan in 1994-95, and Tony Allen in 2010-11. (Daniels is one of three players doing it so far this season, alongside Eason and Thunder chaos agent Alex Caruso.)

Watch Daniels defend, and it’s striking how he manages to be seemingly everywhere — he’s sixth among rotation players in distance covered on defense and 15th in average speed moving on defense, according to Second Spectrum — without sacrificing soundness in service of the splash play. He sticks to Job No. 1 for any defender, keeping the ball in front by using his quick feet to mirror his mark’s movements, and uses the core strength in that 6-foot-8 frame to absorb bumps from attackers while still maintaining his balance. He keeps himself in position to cut off their drives, contest their shots … and, if they expose the ball for even a blink of an eye, relieve them of the burden of handling it.

It rarely feels like he’s freelancing his way out of position, and yet, whenever the ball’s in play, he just apparates. Inbounds passes aren’t safe. Entry passes to the post and elbow aren’t safe. Skips to the corner aren’t safe.

Crossovers aren’t safe, no matter how tight your handle is. Power dribbles in the paint aren’t safe, no matter how strong your hands are. Turning your back to him as you try to mouse-in-the-house his teammate on the block? Definitely not safe.

Even dribble handoffs aren’t safe. Daniels will blow those up, staying connected to the ball-handler as he curls around the screen and forcing his way to the ball, like a blitzing linebacker knifing into the backfield. (He even talks about it like a football player: "For me, you know, it's 'See ball, get ball.'”)

And if you think you’ve blocked it up, been able to bump him off the play, turn the corner and get downhill to the basket? Think again: Daniels, still in pursuit like a heat-seeking horror movie villain, will close the game with his 6-foot-10.5-inch wingspan and poke the ball out from behind.

Daniels is producing one of the more disruptive individual defensive seasons in recent memory, ranking in the 99th percentile in perimeter isolation defense, passing lane defense and defensive playmaking, according to The BBall Index’s game charting. And he’s doing it without having the luxury of taking less-threatening offensive assignments so that he can muck things up by playing free safety: Lining up next to Young, Daniels routinely guards the most dangerous threat an opponent has to offer — Jayson Tatum, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Stephen Curry, Jalen Brunson, De’Aaron Fox, Zach LaVine, et al. — and, as a result, has posted the highest average matchup difficulty in the NBA thus far, per The BBall Index.

That marriage of degree of difficulty and possession-breaking production has sent Daniels’ stock skyrocketing in the Defensive Player of the Year race. It’s unlikely he’ll stick there, considering Atlanta ranks an underwhelming 20th in defensive efficiency overall, the award has long been dominated by centers, and Victor Wembanyama exists. (Seriously: Opponents are shooting 38.1% when Wemby’s the nearest defender. Ludicrous.) Even so: It’d be an honor just to be nominated — and something of an exciting rarity for a franchise that hasn’t landed a player on an All-Defensive team since Paul Millsap in 2016.

There’s still plenty to figure out for Snyder and Co. on a Hawks team that enters Monday’s action at 7-10, comfortably enmeshed in their established home within the play-in tournament spots. Daniels, too, still has a long way to go — especially on the offensive end, where he’s shooting just 36% on jumpers for the season and has missed two-thirds of his total attempts over his last four games, with an assist-to-turnover ratio barely above 1-to-1. But while he remains a work in progress on the offensive end, and while his individual play hasn’t resulted in extinguish-every-star-you-encounter performances, he’s making an impact in the area where the Hawks have long needed it most: They allow nearly five fewer points-per-100 with Daniels on the floor than when he’s off it.

Through the first month of the season, the difference between Atlanta defending at its customary bottom-five level and getting stops at a roughly league-average clip — a rate the Hawks haven’t managed since its surprise 2021 Eastern Conference finals run — has been the 21-year-old prowling the perimeter, making the theme from “Jaws” run through ball-handlers’ heads. Daniels began his tenure in Atlanta by emphasizing the importance of knowing your personnel; now, he’s become the kind of point-of-attack menace that offenses have to know, lest he wreck their entire game plan, one poke, swipe or swat at a time.