Even if you didn’t know the name, the shot — and the sneer — were evident.
Daniss Jenkins, the generously listed 6-foot-4 guard who didn’t sign a standard NBA contract with the Detroit Pistons until February, had just beaten the third-quarter horn with a 3-pointer to push the lead to 19 points in Sunday’s Game 7 against the Orlando Magic.
It didn’t matter who was in his eyesight — random fans in the crowd, his teammates, assistant coaches — they all caught his mouth twisted sideways, feeling the emotion of the moment as the Pistons were completing a comeback from being down 3-1 to win their first playoff series since 2008.
“There’s two things about him,” a Pistons assistant coach told ESPN. “He works hard and he talks s—.”
But if Jenkins’ play and passion throughout this postseason have been met with a collective “who’s this guy?” response, it shouldn’t. The 24-year-old former G League call-up has been a key figure all season during Detroit’s rise to the Eastern Conference top seed.
In fact, the Pistons might not have held on without him.
When top scorer and MVP candidate Cade Cunningham missed three weeks in March and April with a punctured lung, Jenkins averaged 18.6 points and 7.6 assists with a 45% clip from 3 in a 12-game span. The Pistons went 9-3 and clinched the franchise’s first No. 1 seed since 2007 with Jenkins running much of the offense.
“The stuff I’ve been doing here, I’ve always been doing it,” Jenkins told ESPN after dropping 16 points and 14 assists in an April 4 win over the Philadelphia 76ers that secured the conference’s best record.
“It wasn’t like waiting ’til I got here [and] ’till they let me shine.”
The Dallas native was a journeyman collegian, leaving the University of the Pacific when coach Damon Stoudamire left to join Ime Udoka’s Boston Celtics staff in 2021. Jenkins led the Tigers in scoring as a sophomore.
He went the juco route, where his 15 points and 5.3 assists averages for Odessa College caught Rick Pitino’s eye at Iona. Jenkins repeated the production there, earning All-MAAC second-team honors. And when Pitino returned to the Big East, Jenkins followed him to St. John’s. There, he made the Big East second team.
None of it, not even the waves he made during 2024 predraft workouts, resulted in a call in the second round. Jenkins made his way to the G League’s Motor City Cruise, averaging 21 points and seven assists and appearing in a handful of mop-up duty for the big club. But when the Pistons started the 2025-26 season short on guard depth after Jaden Ivey’s leg injury, they brought up Jenkins — and quickly discovered how ready he was for the moment.
“I got excited, I thought it was sweets.”
Charles Barkley heard “Danish” instead of Daniss Jenkins 😠pic.twitter.com/glCdMaLKpO
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 3, 2026
“After I met him and I knew him for a year? That’s when I knew he’d have no problem adjusting,” said Pistons wing Ausar Thompson, who first met Jenkins while playing for Detroit’s’ summer league team in 2024. Thompson recalled his first impressions of Jenkins being “super vocal, super competitive, and he was cold.”
“He’d be fine on this team. One thousand percent. Everyone on this team knew.”
Jenkins has become virtually indispensable to the Pistons’ pursuit of the franchise’s first Finals appearance since 2005, earning enough trust from Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff to carry the playmaking load when Cunningham sits and get critical fourth-quarter playoff minutes alongside the Pistons’ leader.
“I think it’s beneficial to not have Cade always be the guy that five guys are staring at,” Bickerstaff told reporters after the Pistons clinched the East’s top seed.
“To start possessions, if you can put him in the corner some, you can move him around a little bit, put them on the elbows, and then you got [Jenkins] who can initiate the offense still and get the ball to him.”
Bickerstaff had Cunningham and Jenkins on the floor to help close Game 1 of the East semifinals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, where the guard instantly hounded Cleveland’s guards after they made a late charge.
The unwavering confidence has never been shaken, and Jenkins credits his faith and the aforementioned work teammates and coaches witness him putting in.
“I’ve been in every room you could think of,” Jenkins said. “I’ve been the energy guy, the defensive guy. The good teammate.”
The loud teammate.
That of course didn’t stop when the buzz from a surprise burst began to fizzle right after his contract was converted after the trade deadline, as if his hunger were satiated with confirmation of a guaranteed deal.
“That’s been me my whole life. I grew up in Texas, that’s just my mentality,” Jenkins said about his edge, and the dialogue cameras will often catch during games. Usually, the discussion he’s having is internal, with himself, Kevin Garnett-style.
“We can go at it, but for the most part I’m just talking to myself.”
The Pistons, meanwhile, spoke with their roster moves, trading Ivey before the deadline as a vote of confidence that Jenkins could manage an increased workload behind Cunningham. But between Feb. 9 and March 13, Jenkins shot just 32% and averaged 5.9 points as he adjusted to a new role.
“Let’s get through [the struggle],” Jenkins said of that 15-game stretch. “And for me, I wasn’t going to shy away from anything that came with it, because I couldn’t. It was all people wanted to talk about with me, it’s a great story.”
It wasn’t long before he found his edge again. Since the run he helped orchestrate in Cunningham’s injury absence, and after some struggles early in the first round, Jenkins has looked like the ornery, confident player who shows up when the game needs a jolt.
He scored 16 points in Game 7 against Orlando and followed it with 12 points and seven rebounds — including a big fourth-quarter offensive board over former Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley — in Detroit’s Game 1 win against Cleveland.
“He’s been through adversity in every step,” Thompson said. “He learned how to lead teams. And when he got to the league, he wasn’t like, ‘I’m going to take a step to the side.’ …
“That’s why I’m so, so, so happy for him. He works his ass off.”
