Jaylen Clark's gratitude shines through in his first action since a devastating injury (2024)

In the back tunnels of Thomas & Mack Arena, Jaylen Clark was all smiles.

It had been more than a full year since he had been on a basketball court in a competitive game, so it did not matter to him that his first game in a Minnesota Timberwolves jersey wasn’t perfect. Far from it. He missed shots. He was slow to react on occasion. He was breathing heavily after a few minutes on the court.

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When he found several Timberwolves assistants in the hallway leading to the team’s locker room, Clark couldn’t stop giggling as he laid it all out there for them.

“The first three quarters, I was like, ‘Oh s—,’ ” Clark told them after a win over the New Orleans Pelicans at summer league. “I’m not going to lie. I was just out there running around. Finally settled in a little bit in the fourth.”

The desperation is palpable in Las Vegas. You can feel it when you see someone sitting at a blackjack table at 2 a.m. when he doubles down on that 11. It hangs in the air at the arena in summer league, where players from all walks of life are just trying to get noticed to keep their basketball careers going and dozens of wannabe coaches, scouts and analytics experts roam the halls hoping to bump into someone who might know someone who can get them a job in the league.

That is what separated Clark from the pack. There was no desperation, only gratitude. He had not played in a game since rupturing his Achilles while playing for UCLA in March 2023. He spent all of last season rehabbing his injury, the slow grind that has to happen to recover from one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a hooper. Clark’s game is built on strength and toughness. The mentality helped him push through, but it also made it torture to be sitting on the bench and watching for so long.

“Running out in front of 10 or 15,000 people just screaming and you picking somebody up (on defense), you get the steal and dunk and everybody’s like this,” Clark said, raising his hands to mimic a crowd going wild, “I don’t know how if there’s anything in the world that can recreate that. … Just to get that feeling back, man, is all I’m looking forward to.”

He did his best to keep perspective through it all. Clark was not a five-star recruit when he landed at UCLA. He had to earn his way onto the floor, and now he had to do it again.

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“If I was not to make it, it wouldn’t be because I didn’t exhaust every opportunity that I had,” he said. “I ain’t going out, ain’t smoking and drinking. That ain’t me. I ain’t partying, I ain’t here to party, you know? I mean, I’m here to work and get on this court.”

Before the injury, Clark was viewed as a first-round talent, the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year in his last season and a powerful player who could, if he started to shoot the ball better, become a rugged and dependable rotation player in the NBA.

Concerns about his injury forced Clark down the draft board in 2023, falling to No. 53, where Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly decided to take a chance on a player with an elite skill — defense — that Connelly believed would come right back after Clark’s rehab.

“What I like about him is he picks up early and he’s very strong,” said Wolves assistant Chris Hines, who served as head coach of the summer Wolves. “He stands up guys. For him, it’s just finding how to drive and kick and get back to respace, set his feet and shoot the ball.”

With so much time on his hands, Clark went about refining his shot to try to become more of a two-way player when he returned. He shot 33 percent from 3-point range as a junior at UCLA, but he knows that has to improve in the NBA if he is going to be viewed as anything more than a defensive specialist. There was little to get excited about in that realm during four games in Las Vegas, where he shot 24 percent from the field and 22 percent on 3s.

But in some ways that was expected. There is a lot of rust to knock off and a rhythm for him to find. The more run he gets, with his next competitive opportunity coming in October during the preseason, the better the chances are that the shots will start to fall to some degree. Clark has no illusions about offense fueling his drive for playing time, though. He knows that he is on a defense-first team and that his ability to guard multiple positions is what will get him a chance to get on the floor for a team that wants to contend for a title next season.

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“I don’t need shots. I go create my own,” Clark said. “I get steals, I go get rebounds, I dive on the floor. I call it a bowling ball mentality. I go do all the stuff that nobody else wants to do, and that will give me an opportunity, at least, to go do something else.”

His recipe on offense is to be more consistent at hitting the open jumpers that would invariably come his way if he’s sharing the floor with proven scorers like Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns. Clark also needs to get out in transition for easy baskets and do the dirty work on the offensive glass to create more opportunities.