Thunder’s Mark Daigneault has proven himself elite, and Coach of the Year honor is coronation
NEW ORLEANS — It was the third quarter of Saturday’s Game 3. The Oklahoma City Thunder had seen a commanding lead sliced to 10 points by the New Orleans Pelicans, and center Chet Holmgren was due for his second-half rest. With a 2-0 series lead and a short-handed opponent, it would have been easy to play it safe and predictable.
But Thunder coach Mark Daigneault doesn’t do safe and predictable. Instead, he saw an opportunity to do something very different: Insert Gordon Hayward at center. Gordon Hayward!
Not only had Hayward not scored a point all postseason, but he’s also profoundly not a center; he’s 6-foot-7, 225 pounds and blocked a grand total of one shot in his 26 games with the Thunder. Even by Daigneault’s standards, this was an extreme lineup; the other four players were guards Cason Wallace, Isaiah Joe, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams.
The Thunder extended their lead from 10 to 19 over the next four minutes, holding the Pelicans to just two points in that stretch, before Holmgren returned, effectively putting the game away despite their lack of size. The Pelicans reacted after one possession by pulling their own center off the floor, replacing Larry Nance Jr. with Dyson Daniels and effectively removing the original disadvantage Daigneault’s move created.
It kept with a lot of the themes that have made Daigneault a huge success in his four seasons on the sideline in Oklahoma City: Leaning in on small ball, keeping opponents off balance and offsetting some of his own teams’ deficiencies on the glass by chasing opposing big men off the court.
“Some of it is the opponent, if they give us a lineup if (we) think we can do that with,” Daigneault said after Sunday’s practice. “The other thing is, we want to be a little bit unpredictable. We want teams to watch us, New Orleans watching us right now, not knowing quite what we’ll do and when we’ll do it, (showing) a willingness to do it in a lot of different situations. It just expands the menu that they have to prepare for.”
The 39-year-old’s tactics paid off in being named NBA Coach of the Year on Sunday evening after leading the Thunder to a 57-win regular season and the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs. It was a 33-game jump in two seasons from the 24 they won in 2021-22, as well as the Thunder’s first 50-win regular season since Kevin Durant left in 2016.
