Michigan’s Wolf Sets Sights on NBA Stardom

Three years ago, longtime Yale University men’s basketball head coach James Jones was waist-deep in his recruiting efforts, traversing the country to find his next crop of standouts. During one wintry weekend, Jones drove four hours up to Maine to watch center Danny Wolf of the Northfield Mount Hermon School, a seven-footer with tantalizing potential as both a scorer and passer. The only problem was that, unbeknownst to Jones at the time, Wolf was still recovering from a litany of injuries and only saw a couple minutes of court time that evening.

Even though Jones only ever saw precious little of Wolf competing during gametime, he knew about his unique blend of elite spot-up shooting and back-to-basket game and remained undeterred in his pursuit of the Israeli American native of Glencoe, Ill., who began his prep career at Lake Forest Academy in Glencoe before transferring to Northfield Mount Hermon. Jones didn’t blink in offering Wolf a spot on Yale’s 2022-23 roster and even when his freshman season in New Haven got off to a rocky start, the veteran coach had no misgivings.

“His [Wolf’s] nervousness about playing, the transition to college basketball. He wasn’t very good the first month of the season,” admitted Jones when speaking to the AJT last month. “But then he just kind of caught steam and every time you played him, he did something good to make you want to play him more.”

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By his sophomore season, Wolf, who declined to be interviewed for this story, emerged as a dominant presence on both ends of the floor in Ivy League competition, sparking the Bulldogs to a first-round upset over Auburn University in last year’s March Madness. His 14 double-doubles, team-best 14.1 points per game, and ability to hold his own against Kansas’s All-American center, Hunter Dickinson, during a regular season matchup caught the attention of big-time programs, including the University of Michigan, to which Wolf transferred last summer via the wildly popular transfer portal. Now Wolf is holding down the front court for a Wolverines team with national title aspirations while projected to hear his name called in June’s NBA Draft, perhaps as early as the first round – if he decides to forgo his senior year at Michigan.

“I saw what everybody’s seeing now – Danny’s ability to play like a guard at seven feet, 260 pounds,” Jones recalls about the first time he saw Wolf play during a prep school scrimmage. “His ability to handle the ball, his court vision, his skill level, his ability to shoot from the arc. You just don’t find many guys his size that can do that.”

In between Wolf’s freshman year during which he exclusively came off the bench and his breakout sophomore campaign, he competed for the Israel national team at the 2023 FIBA Under-20 European Championships in Heraklion, Greece. Wolf, who averaged a team-best 17.7 points per game and a tournament-best 12.0 rebounds, propelled Israel to a silver medal finish (they ultimately fell to France in overtime, 89-79, in the championship game). But for Wolf, he returned to campus in autumn 2023 with newfound confidence that he could leverage not just his skillset but also his outstanding court vision and basketball IQ toward besting the finest Division I frontcourt players in the country.

“He was absolutely tremendous,” Jones recalls about Wolf’s showing at the 2023 FIBA Under-20 European Championships. “I think that that gave him a great deal of confidence in coming back to Yale. He just hit the ground running and hasn’t looked back since.”

After Yale bowed out of last year’s NCAA tournament in the second round, Wolf sat down with his family and weighed his options for the balance of his college career. Though it was hard to leave Yale, a contender for the Ivy League title and, of course, one of America’s elite academic institutions, the opportunity to enter the transfer portal and play for a college hoops powerhouse that could offer far greater exposure to NBA scouts proved too tempting. During Big Ten Media Day a few months back, Wolf explained his rationale and provided insight into the transfer portal process.

“I have nothing but amazing things to say about my two years at Yale,” Wolf initially acknowledged. “Coaches are great. Teammates were awesome. But when I decided with my family that it would be best to leave, we decided I was going to enter as a ‘do not contact’ because I didn’t want to be inundated by a bunch of schools that I wasn’t interested in and waste their time recruiting me. There was a short list of schools that I was interested in just given the academics and the type of basketball I wanted. Once we had that list and schools were reaching out to me based off of that, I was able to quickly narrow my list down and schedule visits.

Obviously with NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness), it was all so new and just hearing some schools throw out numbers that I had no interest in, just to try to pitch me something to their school. That was a little crazy to me. It’s all just so fast.

“It’s the new norm in college basketball that guys are going to be wearing different jerseys often.”

This winter, while he’s donned a maize and blue jersey at Michigan, Wolf has been a double-double machine (points and rebounds) while averaging a career-high in assists, thus furthering his case for one day joining Portland Trail Blazers small forward Deni Avdija and Sacramento Kings all-star forward Domantas Sabonis (who’s in the process of converting) as the only Jewish players currently in the NBA.

“Danny is certainly capable of playing at the next level,” asserted Jones. “He’s going to have an opportunity to play in the NBA. It’s going to be his work ethic and someone falling in love with Danny and believing in him to make it happen.

He’s certainly going to have a chance. He’s a kid that really wants to make it to the next level and he’s doing everything he can to get himself there.”