Jaylen Clark

Clark was the best perimeter defender in college basketball at UCLA — the 2023 Naismith Defensive Player of the Year — before a torn Achilles that March scared teams off and dropped him to 53rd, where Minnesota pounced. The injury cost him his entire rookie season, so his NBA career is really only two years old. In 2025-26 he played 68 games as a situational stopper, averaging 4.0 points and 0.7 steals in 13.1 minutes — a line that hides his real job: smothering opposing lead guards for the stretches Chris Finch's tight rotation could trust. The offense is still a work in progress and his minutes thinned in the playoffs, but the market spoke this summer, as Minnesota re-signed him to a reported three-year deal — a low-cost bet on defense a tax-strapped roster valued.