Dyson Daniels went 3 of 16 against the New York Knicks last week. It was amazing.

Let me explain.

First, it was a career-high in shot attempts. Second, he took the 16th even after making just three of his first 15. And he did it with a minute left in a one-point game.

That shot missed, too, but that’s hardly the point. After two seasons in New Orleans, Daniels’ rep upon arriving in Atlanta this summer was that his confidence came and went, and if he missed a few shots, he’d start pulling the ball down and pass up shots entirely. Despite flashing amazing defensive talent, his inability to be a consistent threat on the offense was keeping him off the court.

It wasn’t just that he was shooting 31 percent from 3; it was that his microscopic 12 percent usage rate meant defenses could disregard him entirely. So far, in Atlanta, things are very different. Daniels took the rock with 70 seconds left against New York and made a hard, downhill drive for a pull-up floater that missed. Three makes on 16 attempts. And it didn’t stop him.

Daniels set another career high the next night by shooting 17 times. Two games later, he took 21 shots, scoring a career-high 28 points in Atlanta’s Trae Young-less upset of world champion Boston on the Celtics’ home court.

Daniels’ defense has drawn all the attention in the early season, and deservedly so. But the underrated part of his breakout season has been the confidence he’s played with on offense, shrugging off misses and coming back to let it rip on the next trip. The record scratches from New Orleans are a thing of the past.

Hawks coach Quin Snyder talked about this topic and how it applied to Daniels before the season. It’s worked out almost exactly as he said then.

“I think a lot of it is situational,” Snyder said. “Usually guys are more confident when they can anticipate that they’re going to have a shot. If you get the ball and then you want to decide, (in) that moment, your conscious mind takes you out of rhythm. Especially for younger guys, if they’re concerned about whether the ball is going to go in or not, that’s not the best thing. It’s more than a green light. It’s understanding situational shooting, knowing that it’s not only a green light but you have to take that shot. It’s important for you to shoot that whether you make or miss.”

Snyder has seen a version of this movie before, coincidentally, with another young Australian who was reluctant to shoot. He had Joe Ingles in Utah when Ingles was a gun-shy rookie; Ingles didn’t shoot more than five times until the 15th game of the season and finished with a 12.9 usage rate. Three years later, he launched 464 3s for a team that went to the second round of the playoffs.

Ingles saw all the flashes from Daniels this summer with the Australian national team when both were preparing for the Olympics. It’s no surprise to him that Daniels is thriving under Snyder.

“The last few summers, we would see the talent, the IQ, the defensive ability and all those different things,” Ingles said. “Then this summer he played a lot (in the Olympics), guarded the best player every time, and offensively would show the poise and playmaking. I was really impressed. And he’s a really good kid who works his ass off.

“Knowing Quin, he will unlock some offensive ability and potential, for sure. He did it with me, he’s done it with a lot of the players I’ve been around. He makes you want to run through a wall for him. For me, coming over (to the NBA) at 27 and doing what he was able to do with me, he was a huge part of that, and I think he’ll give that to Dyson.”

We should talk about the defense too. Daniels has been a terror on that end, leading the league in deflections and steals by staggering margins while adding size and physicality on the wing at 6-foot-8. To put in perspective just how much of a pest he’s been, Alex Caruso led the league last year with 3.7 deflections per game. Daniels is averaging 7.6.

Go through the clips of all his thievery and you’ll see he’s earned his steals in an impressive variety of ways — overplaying passing lanes, deflecting his own man’s passes with “high hands” and using a karate-chop strip move, for instance.

He’s also straight-up embarrassed a few guys by picking their dribble at midcourt. Like this:

Daniels has 23 steals in his last four games; only three other players have that many all season. Suffice to say Atlanta has never had a wing defender like this before, and while it hasn’t impacted the overall results on that end (the Hawks, as ever, are 26th in defense), the team’s stats are much better in Daniels’ on-court minutes, even though most of them are shared with Young.

More importantly, Daniels has also warmed up to the “Great Barrier Thief” nickname recently. We need to make this stick, people!

As long as Daniels keeps letting it rip with confidence on the offensive end, the Hawks can benefit from his awesome turnover creation on defense. He has a great shot of being named to the All-Defense team and will likely be a strong contender for Most Improved Player, too, making him arguably the most significant emerging player from the season’s opening weeks.

Daniels is the most important one, but here are nine other names you need to know from the season’s first few weeks:

Wahoowa! While several Memphis players warrant mentioning here as the back half of the roster has helped keep the Grizzlies afloat amid myriad injuries, Huff stands out. A lightly regarded two-way signing before the season, he’s already gained a promotion to the main roster following a series of eruptions off the bench, even earning a start in Wednesday’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Huff isn’t a post threat, but he makes an offensive impact in two entirely different ways. First, he’s a rim-runner who gets out in transition and can finish lobs, specializing in reverse dunks like in the clip below.

JAY HUFF SIGNATURE REVERSE SLAM pic.twitter.com/Z0r31y5x1s

— eric (@EricTweetsNBA) November 14, 2024

However, he also doubles as a half-court 3-point threat, having made 43.8 percent from distance so far this year. Huff gets them up, too, jacking 48 attempts in his 185 minutes. The 7-foot-1 center also offers rim protection, with a stellar 11.6 percent block rate and, notably, a dramatically reduced foul rate from his previous stops in the NBA.

That package has proven especially effective on an up-tempo Memphis team that has leaned into its depth and pace to stay afloat. At age 26 and on his fourth team, Huff looks like a keeper as a backup center and is under contract for three years beyond this one.

Wahoowa! (This won’t be all Virginia guys, I promise.) You could pick multiple names from this Cavs squad rampaging through the schedule; Caris LeVert also has been a monster, most notably.

But for sheer out of nowhere-ness, we have to go with Jerome, who signed a minimum deal in Cleveland two summers ago and then missed all of last season after ankle surgery. I’m not sure what the Cavs’ hopes were for him this season, but I suspect “leading an undefeated team in PER” would be at the high end. Jerome is in his sixth season and has never played more than 48 games or 816 minutes in any of them, but that’s about to change dramatically.

One of the keys has been a deadly floater game; more than half his 2s have come between 3 and 16 feet, per Basketball-Reference.com, and he’s made nearly two-thirds of them. Add in an accurate 3-point shot (a scalding 57.7 percent so far) and top-notch reads as a passer (more than three dimes for every turnover), and he’s been a massive plus captaining the Cavs’ second unit.

Perhaps more shocking than the offensive output has been Jerome’s impact defensively. Despite his notorious slowness afoot, he’s pilfered 18 steals in just 211 minutes. That’s the league’s third-highest theft rate among players with at least 200 minutes, trailing only Daniels and Caruso.

I ran into a front-office executive at the Champions Classic who witnessed Powell’s 29-point second-half eruption in Oklahoma City on Monday, and he riddled me with this question: If they selected the teams today, would Powell make the Western Conference All-Star team?

Nooooorm has been that good, averaging 24.9 points per game with 50/49/83 shooting splits to help keep a limited Clippers offense functioning. In particular, he’s been devastating walking into 3s off the dribble.

Norman Powell stock continues to rise 📈

He helps lead the Clippers to a W with 31 points & 12 rebounds 🔥 pic.twitter.com/cOWo7n5bfC

— NBA TV (@NBATV) November 9, 2024

Never mind that he’s 31 and in his 10th season; Powell is having a career year and has been the Clippers’ go-to guy at times, with a 26.6 usage rate that nearly rivals teammate James Harden’s. And it’s not just the scoring: Powell is posting a career high assist percentage and has a steal in nine straight games.

Forgotten as the Pacers made an Eastern Conference finals run while he sat out injured last spring, the 2022 lottery pick has come back with a vengeance.

I was fortunate enough to be in Indy to witness Mathurin’s origin story, so to speak, when he replaced an injured Andrew Nembhard against the Celtics and finished with 30 points in a surprise win. While the Pacers’ offense has otherwise remained shockingly anemic in the early going, Mathurin has been a revelation. He’s averaged 24.0 points per game over his last seven contests while starting the most recent six.

An electric downhill driver, especially going left, Mathurin draws fouls for sport (10.1 free-throw attempts per 100 possessions), but he’s not just trying to scam trips to the line. He also has an accurate long-range game (46.5 percent on 3s thus far) to keep defenses honest and has enough pull-up game to be a true three-level threat.

Bennedict Mathurin helps us get within four late in the fourth quarter. he’s up to 23 points and 11 rebounds. pic.twitter.com/0y4tmDcD2i

— Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) November 14, 2024

The 6-6 guard also leads the team in rebounding, which is a wee bit of an indictment of the Pacers’ frontcourt, but a 12.3 percent rebound rate from a perimeter player is impressive on any level.

Nit-pickers will note Mathurin still has his shortcomings, being prone to ball-stopping, dribble blindness and periodic defensive lapses, but if he keeps scoring this efficiently and this often, it’s easy to look past those warts. Mathurin has been Indy’s best player in the early going, and one presumes he won’t be coming off the bench when Nembhard returns.

Guess who leads Golden State in 3-point attempt rate? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not Stephen Curry. Hield not only has the highest rate of attempts on the Warriors, but also leads the entire NBA in made 3s per 100 possessions with 7.5.

After being an afterthought in the Philadelphia 76ers’ offense late last season, Hield has been a prolific and accurate launcher for the Warriors, playing some of the best basketball of his career at 31. Nobody will complain as long as he’s making 46.7 percent of his 3s, which he’s done so far, in addition to knocking down 54.9 percent of his 2s. For good measure, he’s setting a career high in rebound rate too.

Hield is only playing 24.5 minutes a night in the Warriors’ egalitarian system, but he’s second on the team in scoring and PER and a big reason Golden State ranks third in the NBA in offensive efficiency — the Warriors were eighth each of the last two seasons. On the first season of a four-year deal that pays him an average of $9.4 million, he’s been one of the best signings of the 2024 offseason.

After missing most of last season because of a stress reaction and other issues, Eason has roared back to be arguably Houston’s most effective player in the first dozen games. Coming off the bench, he’s energized a Rockets second unit that has helped overcome blah output from the starting group en route to an 8-4 start. Units featuring Eason and partner in chaos Amen Thompson have outscored opponents by 17.6 points per 100 possessions so far, with a sterling 100.2 defensive rating.

What’s notable is that Eason is a more efficient version of his usual mayhem, shooting 62.8 percent on 2s after making fewer than half across his first two seasons. He’s doing it by getting all the way to the rim and finishing; watch here, for instance, as he sizes up Nic Batum and puts him on a poster Wednesday.

Tari Eason shows his athleticism with this one handed dunk to walk away with the Dunk of the Night. #NBAAfrica pic.twitter.com/Z1VptEMoIt

— NBA Africa (@NBA_Africa) November 14, 2024

Eason’s play, along with that of Thompson, could eventually force the Rockets into some difficult decisions on lineups and salaries. The two have been dramatically more effective than Houston’s starters, and Eason will be up for a contract extension after the season. For now, however, let’s enjoy the show.

Agbaji’s jump shot has always looked like a thing of beauty in pregame warm-ups, but in his third season, it’s finally translating to games. After making just 34.6 percent from 3 in his first two seasons in Utah and underwhelming in a late-season cameo after the trade deadline, he’s emerged as a solid starter in Toronto by knocking down 47.9 percent from distance in the early part of the season.

Accuracy is paramount for Agbaji since he’ll never be a high-usage player, but he’s also made an impact inside the arc by focusing more on transition and rim attempts and ditching the other stuff. He’s only taken two shots between 10 feet and the 3-point line all season but is shooting 64.4 percent at the rim.

On the third year of his rookie deal, Agbaji establishing himself as a 3-and-D guy would go a long way toward getting his deal extended this summer. His emergence has been much needed on a paper-thin Raptors roster reeling from other injuries at the wing.

While the rest of the Bucks’ bench has been a wasteland, Green has delivered in his role in the most pickup-legend way possible: by never taking a 2-point shot. His 53 3-point attempts without a 2 to start the season is an NBA record, (sorry, Garrison Mathews), one that finally came to an end when he missed a paint attempt Wednesday against Detroit.

Watching Green shoot, it’s hard to believe he’s so accurate. The undrafted guard from Northern Iowa tucks the ball all the way behind his head and then lets it rip, but the results speak for themselves. He shot 42.6 percent from 3 in the G League in 2022-23 and is at 42.7 percent for his NBA career to go with 92 percent from the line (he shot 90 percent in four college seasons). With a 50 percent mark from 3 this season on a team otherwise short on floor-spacing options, Green has established himself as an important piece as Milwaukee tries to recover from a woeful start.

He’s also important on another level — as a cost-controlled piece on a minimum deal for another season, something the tax-constrained Bucks desperately need on their books.

Lost in the insanity of Miami’s bizarre loss to Detroit on Tuesday was the play of Herro in nearly leading the Heat to an impossible comeback. Down nine in the final 90 seconds of regulation, he made three straight 3-pointers to send it to overtime, part of a 40-point eruption that included 10 made 3s.

That wasn’t an outlier, either. Through 10 games, Herro has been Miami’s best player, averaging 24.9 points on breathtaking shooting splits: 54.7 percent on 2s and 47.9 percent on nearly 10 3-point attempts a game. That adds up to scalding 66.8 true shooting percentage, a notable change for a player who historically has been middle of the pack on this measure.

In a related story, Herro has basically excised the long 2 from his shot diet. He took more than a quarter of his shots between 10 feet and the 3-point line in 2023-24; this season, that’s only 7 percent of his output, according to Basketball-Reference.com.

Here’s one middie he did make, though, a difficult leaner with 1.8 seconds left in overtime to tie the score Tuesday … a play forgotten in the craziness that happened immediately after.

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(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb/ The Athletic; Photos: Bart Young, Eric Espada / NBAE via Getty Images)

Jon Jones has accumulated a wealth of labels throughout a 16-year UFC career that is almost exhausting in its complexity.

First, he was the wunderkind, when he ran through esteemed contenders like Maurício Rua, Quinton Jackson, Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans, as he built his case as the new face of the sport. In 2011 at age 23, he became the UFC’s youngest champion.

Quickly, he was criticized for his maneuvering in the cutthroat and often caustic world of combat sports, when UFC president Dana White called him “selfish” for not accepting a last-minute opponent in 2012. Similar takes persist today on social media, from fighters and fans and observers in the sport who want to steer Jones toward their entertainment of choice. “On the internet everyone’s like, ‘You’re a duck,’” Jones said in an interview, referring to him choosing certain fights and, in some minds, ducking others. “Is being called a duck supposed to sway my decisions? What is this, high school?”

A string of deeper, more troubling setbacks throughout his career has often prompted even sharper assessments. He failed three drug tests, and explained the first to USA Today in 2016 by saying: “I was a drug addict.” Jones has regularly faced legal troubles, including accusations of hitting women, including his fiancée, and was stripped of a championship belt when he was accused of fleeing the scene of a hit-and-run wreck on foot.

His greatest rivalry, with Daniel Cormier, was sidelined heavily as a result, and when Jones tested positive for anabolic steroids, he was stripped of his belt for a third time and his knockout of Cormier was changed to a no-contest.

White said then that it could be the end of Jones’ career. On Thursday, he said that despite tension in their working relationship, it made “common sense” to keep booking him fights.

“You cannot deny what this guy has accomplished. And most of the things he’s accomplished, he’s done with not being very good to himself,” White told The Athletic. “He’s the greatest of all time and one of the baddest human beings to ever walk the face of the earth. And when I talk about him, I talk about his dark side, too. I mean, Jon Jones is a scary dude.”

He added: “I told (former UFC chief executive) Lorenzo Fertitta: ‘This is a guy you can’t build a business with.’”

Yet Jones has exactly that stature, with top billing in what could reasonably be considered UFC’s biggest event of the year. Jones is scheduled to fight Stipe Miocic, another great in the sport, for the heavyweight title on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.

“I think Jon Jones battles with these inner demons sometimes on who he is and I think he wants to be that good guy. I think he has a lot of internal battles with who he really is. But at the end of the day what Jon Jones has to come to grips with and what he has to realize is Jon Jones is a killer and he was put on this earth to do exactly what he’s doing right now,” White said.

Jones declined to talk about specifics around his arrests and other problems, but broadly acknowledged his stumbles. “I haven’t always lived a perfect Christian life,” he said, a reference to the religious themes that he says have been a big part of his family and private life. (A Bible verse will be etched onto his trunks on Saturday to mirror one of his tattoos.)

“I’d like people to remember me as just a person that overcame, a person that was very much human, a guy who had a lot of flaws and a guy who really loved God from start to finish,” he added.

His parents, Camille and Arthur Jones Jr., raised three sons who reached the top echelon of their sports. Both of Jon’s brothers were Super Bowl-winning defensive linemen; his older brother, Arthur, in the 2012 season with the Baltimore Ravens; his younger brother, Chandler, in the 2014 season with the New England Patriots.

Each morning, Jon Jones said, his father is up at 4 a.m. fasting and praying for his sons, then blowing up their phones with sermons and Bible verses. Camille, who died in 2017 from complications of diabetes, was praised by women in their church at her memorial for her effect on their lives, Jones said.

“She showed me that you can be a rock star without being a professional athlete, without being famous,” he said.

Jones said his parents showed him how he could be admired. His public mistakes, conversely, are for him to own.

“The best sides of me definitely came from them, as far as the humanitarian side of me, the compassionate side of me, the side that really genuinely cares about my neighbor. Now, as human beings, we have many sides to us…” Jones said before trailing off.

In the octagon, Jones is clear that he’s fighting for his own ends rather than to feed into fights that may be in public demand.

Jones and Miocic pose ahead of their UFC 309 title fight. (Photo: Josh Hedges / Zuffa LLC)

This week, he has circled around the interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall, a British fighter who won the interim belt a year ago when Jones had to postpone a bout with Miocic with a shoulder injury. Aspinall fought Sergei Pavlovich instead, and even defended the interim belt earlier this year while Jones waited to fight Miocic. Miocic has greater name recognition, but at 42 is four years removed from his last victory.

Still, Jones seems uninterested in fighting Aspinall, and indicated that he would rather fight Alex Pereira, the light heavyweight champion who has quickly risen to be a star. He could also retire, a common move used by fighters for a variety of reasons – often sincerely and also often to drive up their bankability in a sport with a fight-by-fight payday.

“If the UFC is interested in having me come back to maybe fight against Pereira, I think that’d be a fight worth my while.” Jones said. “And outside of that, man, I’d love to test my hand in Hollywood, and use some of this influence that I’ve gained to put me in some really cool roles and in movie roles and action films and things like that.”

Jon Jones is prepared to hang up the gloves.

The heavyweight champ told @TheAthletic his main goal for #UFC309 is to become the first man to submit Stipe Miocic, “and I’m prepared to retire after that, very happily.” pic.twitter.com/6jeOiJh32q

— Mark Puleo (@ByMarkPuleo) November 8, 2024

White said he would only entertain Jones fighting Pereira, who has become the new UFC darling for his thrilling style and frequent, action-filled title defenses, if Jones fights Aspinall first.

“If Jon wants to fight Aspinall, we’ll do it. And if he beats Aspinall and then said he wanted to fight Pereira, I would consider it,” White said.

The uncertainty all sets up for plenty of drama no matter the Jones-Miocic result.

“You can call me chicken, duck, goat, whatever,” Jones said, adding: “It’s not my responsibility to help someone else build a brand or give someone an opportunity. My job is to take care of my legacy and do what’s best for my legacy.”

Jones – at 27-1 with the no contest and his only loss a disqualification — appreciates that being considered among the greatest fighters is part of how fans discuss his mark on the sport.

“I feel like it’s always going to be an opinion. Some people would like fighters because of the way they carry themselves. Some people like fighters because of the way they compete. Some people like fighters because of the way they changed the sport. There are so many different opinions on that,” Jones said. “I’m just grateful to be in the conversation.”

And White, despite saying finding it difficult to work with Jones at times, said the results have been clear. “Win, lose, draw on Saturday night, his legacy is set. He’s the greatest of all time,” White said. “Nobody’s accomplished what he’s accomplished.”

Required reading

(Photo: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)

At first glance, former NFL quarterback Joey Harrington’s career doesn’t have too many parallels with Wrexham or soccer, a sport he stopped playing around the age of 10.

But the third overall pick in the 2002 NFL draft insists the Welsh club’s rise chimes with his own. So much so that Harrington and his family regularly wake up at home in Portland, in the west-coast state of Oregon, early on Saturdays to watch Phil Parkinson’s side playing live 4,750 miles away.

“If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d be buying a subscription to something called the Vanarama National League,” he says about the competition, the fifth-tier in English football’s pyramid, Wrexham won in 2022-23, “I’d have laughed at you.

“Now, though, I’m up at 6.30am every Saturday to catch the 7am match (3pm UK time). No way could I have imagined doing that just a few years ago. But, as a family, we’re totally wrapped up in the club and the journey they are on.”

Harrington’s own sporting journey comes with pedigree. His dad John played quarterback for the University of Oregon in the late 1960s and his grandfather Bernie did the same for the state’s University of Portland around 25 years earlier. If he hadn’t served in the Second World War, Bernie would no doubt have played in the NFL after being heavily courted by several teams, among them George Halas’ Chicago Bears.

Joey’s three years following in his father’s footsteps as Oregon’s quarterback proved transformational for the team, as they went from also-rans to being ranked No 2 in the U.S. college game. Harrington was the key man — and a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2001 — before the Detroit Lions drafted him the following year. Only fellow quarterback David Carr (Houston Texans) and future Hall of Famer Julius Peppers (Carolina Panthers) went off the board quicker.

He spent four seasons in Detroit, then had stints with the Miami Dolphins, Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints. An impressive resume by any standards, but one that showed no indication of a retirement involving a small club playing a totally different sport on the other side of the Atlantic.

Enter series one of Welcome To Wrexham, the documentary charting Hollywood celebrities Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ takeover of the club, and a subsequent family visit to north Wales.

“Our sons, Jack and Emmet, had reached the age where you want to start exposing them to international travel,” Harrington says. “To give them a perspective of the world and what’s out there.

“We framed the trip by getting tickets through Nike (a major backer of the University of Oregon’s sports teams) to Manchester City versus Liverpool. The boys, both goalkeepers, were thrilled, as they had gravitated towards soccer, even though everyone assumed my kids would play American football.

“The plan was to spend time in London, call in to see some friends in Bristol and drive to Manchester. Jack, my eldest, then says, ‘Can we stop by Wrexham on the way?’ We’d all watched series one of the documentary by now and loved it.”

Wrexham were locked in a two-way scrap for the National League title with Notts County at the time, but when the Harrington family visited the ground they were given a warm welcome, including an impromptu ground tour from Geraint Parry, club secretary and Wrexham’s longest-serving member of staff.

“The first person we bump into in the tunnel is (Wrexham’s then goalkeeper and former England international) Ben Foster,” recalls Harrington. “He walks straight up to the boys, and I’m not exaggerating here, starts talking to them like they were family, asking all sorts of questions.

“When he found out their favourite position, straightaway he says, ‘I’m a goalkeeper, too, my name is Ben’. You could see the click in Jack’s eyes, as he realised, ‘Oh my God, this is Ben Foster, the England goalie’.

“Another three steps down the tunnel and (Wrexham’s manager) Phil Parkinson appears. He says, ‘Hi’ to the boys and then has a conversation with my wife, Emily, that she still talks about today. It’s probably a conversation he’s had a thousand times, one that he doesn’t even remember. But the fact he took a few moments to talk family and the boys with Emily said a lot to me.”

The Harringtons’ whistle-stop tour also involved meeting the club shop staff and head groundsman Paul Chaloner before calling in at The Turf, the pub next to Wrexham’s home which has been made famous by the documentary.

“Wayne (Jones, landlord) was brilliant with the boys,” he adds. “Made them feel so welcome that Jack, who remember is 13 at the time, so this is his first time in a bar, says to me, ‘Dad, can we play pool? There’s loads of quarters lined up on the table we can use.’

“I’m, like, ‘No, no, no, that isn’t how it works’. But the guy whose money it was said, ‘Don’t worry about it, you can have my slot’. At a time when the entire world was starting to convene on this small town in Wales, these guys treated my family like we were the first to visit.

“I’ve seen professional sports at the highest level, including a decade in the NFL. I’ve seen what that world looks like. So, as a father, to see how everyone — literally to a person, from the club shop staff to the guy running the pub and the Premier League goalkeeper who stopped a PK (penalty kick) against Notts County just a couple of weeks later — treated my kids and my family, Wrexham could lose every single match for eternity and I would still support this club.”

Autzen Stadium; Eugene, Oregon. October 12, 2024.

Actor Kaitlin Olson is back at her former university for the huge college football matchup between Oregon, who are ranked No 3 in the nation, and second-placed Ohio State. She’s joined in an Oregon record crowd of 60,129 by husband Rob. As in Rob McElhenney, her co-star in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Wrexham’s co-owner.

2 years ago @Wrexham_AFC welcomed my family. Saturday my OR&Wrexham worlds collided. ExDir @thehumphreyker is running 26.2 for @WrexhamMiners. To help, I’ll match every $ donated 2his cause up to $2,620. It’s a small world &kindness comes full circlehttps://t.co/DyzB8WQ2JD pic.twitter.com/1tYU2SpfFx

— Joey Harrington (@joey3harrington) October 19, 2024

Also in attendance is Harrington, back where it all began for him as a college quarterback in the 1990s. They all get talking during the afternoon and later pose for a post-match celebratory photo that sees the trio perform the ‘O’ hand signal that has become synonymous with Harrington’s final Oregon game before turning pro.

“This was the first time I’d met Rob and Kaitlin,” he says. “They were great, no pretence about them at all. You’d never know they were Hollywood stars. They were just part of the family and were so welcoming to me and my friends.

“We chatted Wrexham and I showed them the photo of Ben Foster with the boys. How they both were didn’t surprise me. It’s exactly how we’d been treated in Wrexham, where the town, the team, the organisation follow the example of the leadership.”

Harrington and his family are yet to visit Wrexham for a match, though he hopes to rectify that next year. They did attend the pre-season friendly against Manchester United in San Diego, California, last year where Paul Mullin suffered four broken ribs and a collapsed lung, along with this July’s match between Wrexham women’s team and Portland Thorns that attracted a crowd of 10,379 — a record for the Welsh club.

GO DEEPER

Wrexham are still targeting the Premier League – but how could they afford it?

The latter came shortly after Harrington had been confirmed as an investor in National Women’s Soccer League club Thorns, alongside two-time Olympic decathlon Ashton Eaton and Olympic heptathlon bronze medalist Brianne Theisen-Eaton.

It’s quite the turnaround for someone who readily admits to being turned off the game for years by what he considered to be play-acting in men’s football.

“I’d see the guys go down on the pitch and a stretcher would be brought out to carry him off,” says Harrington, 46, who has pledged $2,620 to executive director Humphrey Ker’s fund-raising attempts for the Wrexham Miners’ Rescue by running next year’s Manchester marathon.

“He’d then get to the sideline, where the magic spray would come out and he’d be fine. I had no respect for that. So, despite playing until fourth grade, my experiences with soccer were not very positive.”

It took watching Canada’s Christine Sinclair, the sport’s all-time leading international goalscorer with 190 goals in 331 games, play for the University of Portland in the early 2000s to start changing his mind.

“Christine got knocked off the ball,” he recalls. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh great, here come the theatrics’. But, no, she popped right back up and gave the girl an elbow on the way back up. Not only was she instantly my favourite player but I thought, ‘I’m only going to watch women’s soccer’.”

Harrington playing for the Miami Dolphins in 2006 (Al Bello/Getty Images)

Welcome To Wrexham helped change that stance, especially after he started to spot those parallels between his own career and how the Welsh club’s fortunes were being transformed under Reynolds and McElhenney.

“What really resonates is the similarities with what has happened at Wrexham and my own time with the Oregon football programme,” he says. “When I showed up in ’97, we were seen as irrelevant by the rest. We were afterthoughts. So, a group of us sat down and decided to change things. We were going to win things, and specifically a national championship.

“A lot of people laughed at us. But we stuck at it and things began to change. OK, we didn’t win the national championship in my senior year, we finished No 2 in the country. But to put the programme in a place where we remain part of the national conversation was incredibly special.

“Later, I got to the NFL and it was a business — ‘What can you do for me? How am I going to get mine?’, stabbing people in the back to get another year (on your contract). Which I get when you’re in a multi-billion dollar business.

“But my point is I’ve personally experienced what can happen when you get a group of people together who truly not just care about the goal — which is coming out of irrelevance into prominence — but also each other. I see the same thing at Wrexham.

“There’s more to it than just putting butts on seats, there’s more to it than just scratching and clawing your way to the top. It’s how you do it and who you bring along and why you do it that also matters. Wrexham get that.”

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(Top photo: The Harringtons on their visit to the Racecourse Ground/Joey Harrington)