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MANILA, Philippines – An unassuming figure on the sidelines, Mark Daigneault has always been the glue that kept the ever youthful OKC Thunder crew together since its rebuilding seasons five years ago.
Now in his first NBA Finals as head coach, the 40-year-old Daigneault wants to stay true to who he is: steady, understated, and locked in.
“I try not to operate with any expectations. [I want to] just, you know, do my best every day, help everybody else to do their best every day and, and see where that lands us,” he said in a press conference ahead of the NBA Finals, where they will face the Indiana Pacers on Friday, June 6, Manila time.
Daigneault , relatively unknown when he took over the Thunder’s head coaching role in 2020, was not supposed to be here. Not by pedigree. Not by name. Then again, nothing about Daigneault’s path has been typical.
Formative years
Two decades ago, Daigneault was a student-manager for the University of Connecticut under legendary head coach Jim Calhoun. He was later recommended to be an assistant coach at the College of Holy Cross, where he served from 2007 to 2010.
Daigneault then moved to the University of Florida, where he was an assistant coach for former Thunder head coach Billy Donovan. In four years there, Daigneault quickly became a coaching prodigy as OKC took him under its wings in 2014 to be the new head coach of the Blue, the Thunder’s G-League affiliate team.
“I was like raised here in professional basketball. I didn’t work anywhere else in pro basketball prior to coming here,” he said.
Unlike his counterpart, Indiana Pacers’ head coach Rick Carlisle, who was a five-year NBA veteran before becoming an assistant coach in 1989, Daigneault clawed from the ground up.
In the G-League, at the center of barely half-filled arenas, he found his voice. A couple of seasons later, he found his fluency.
There, he coached players trying to stay ready for a call that may never come. One of them was now the Thunder’s defensive dynamo, Alex Caruso.
“Mark earned this,” Caruso, who played for the Blue in the 2016-2017 season said. “Mark has a great, great work ethic and a great mind for the game. He does a good job of keeping the focus of the team and aligning our mindset for where it needs to be.”
In 2016, Daigneault became the Thunder’s assistant coach behind Donovan, before succeeding him in 2020. He did not walk into a Finals-ready roster or a superstar-centric one, like the former Thunder teams he witnessed.
During that rebuild, Daigneault coached a youth-laden crew full of names that are looking to prove themselves in the NBA. In his first two seasons as head coach, Daigneault only amassed 22 and 24 wins, respectively.
“Those experiences were challenging, but they really stretched us and built our muscle as a team,” he recalled.
Daigneault saw it as a laboratory for talent development. He coached 10-day and two-way contract players, helping them build their value. For him, it wasn’t about star power — it was about alignment, as fostered by Thunder’s general manager Sam Presti, the man behind the team’s roster construction.
“My entire philosophy in professional basketball was underneath the umbrella of the Thunder organization and our philosophical alignment is so tight. You know, you’re part of a large ecosystem of developing players and developing a team, and you’re executing a large strategy for an organization,” he said.
To him, it was like standing on a pile of puzzle pieces full of raw, talented, and completely unproven talents, and building it piece by piece.
“You know, those are things that have to exist in order to be a sustainably successful team in the NBA.”
Before the Thunder knew it, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the foundational star the team got from a now iconic trade, fulfilled his ceiling, Jalen Williams rose into a formidable star, and Chet Holmgren delivered on the promise of a unique skillset to be the Thunder’s cornerstones.
OKC eventually advanced to the play-in tournament before topping the Western Conference standings last year. However, they lost in the second round against the Dallas Mavericks.
Last offseason, the Thunder made key additions to the team, trading for Alex Caruso and signing Isaiah Hartenstein to add veteran heads to their core.
“I think some of the adversities that we had to endure and some of the challenges that we had to overcome, especially early, really built a strong foundation for us,” he said.
Loving the process
Ever since he was named the Thunder head coach, Daigneault has taken pride in development, in nuance, and in patience so radical it felt revolutionary in a league obsessed with immediacy.
Such patience came not just from the franchise’s basketball philosophy, but from a deeper joy in the process itself.
“What makes it great every day is simple — it’s the people,” Daigneault said. “Starting with our players, I mean, these are guys with unbelievable makeup. They come from awesome circles. They have unbelievable stories and they bring an authentic and a genuine sense of self to the gym every day. That creates positive momentum.”
Momentum has been the fuel of the Thunder’s playoff run. After winning 69 games in the regular season, OKC swept the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round in a series that included a 29-point comeback win in Game 3.
In the second round, they survived the Denver Nuggets, led by three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, who was just two years removed from winning the NBA championship.
It was the Thunder’s biggest challenge since rebuilding their core. OKC won in seven games, leaning on their unrelenting defense, and timely heroics by Gilgeous-Alexander to advance to the conference finals.
There, they breezed past the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games to reach the NBA Finals once more, 13 years after the team’s first-ever appearance in 2012.
That left them with just four more wins to snag the coveted NBA title and perhaps end their stellar season with the greatest cherry on top in basketball lore.
For Daigneault, however, the end is far from his vision. For him, it is a never-ending process.
“There’s not a part of me that wants this to end,” Daigneault said.
“I just want to keep coaching this team because of just how much of a joy it is to be around this group of guys every day. And I think I probably speak for everybody when I say that. I mean, there’s just a great energy to our gym every day, regardless of what’s going on in our season,” he added.
Staying true
As the second youngest team in NBA Finals history takes the floor, the Thunder aren’t trying to act like veterans or pretending to be something they’re not.
And that is by design, especially considering they have embraced being one of the youngest teams in the league for the past five years.
Yet, Daigneault’s message of staying true to their identity has remained firm for his players. If anything, it has even grown simpler.
“Just try to stay very present and [for] everyone just be who we are,” he said. “Not try to be something we’re not. Not try to pretend that we’re more experienced than we are or aren’t. Just be who we are. Play the way we play. Be the team we’ve been all season. Be the person that you are.”
Meanwhile, for his players, this was again a marching order ahead of the NBA Finals.
According to bench sparkplug Aaron Wiggins, who was picked 55th overall in the 2021 NBA Draft and has turned into one of the best role players in the league, Daigneault demands the best for everyone, regardless of what stage they are playing at.
“Coach Mark has just been good about just demanding us to be our best selves, making sure that on both ends of the court. Making sure that we’re in a rhythm and we understand what it’ll take for us to be able to go out there and give ourselves the best chance of winning games,” Wiggins said.
Wiggins was one of the bench contributors in the playoffs, making up the depth the Thunder boasts throughout the season.
Daigneault hopes this calm insistence on staying true to their identity — one that also demands them to be their best on both ends of the floor — would be their tactical edge.
Ultimately, when the lights got brighter and the noise inside the arenas got louder in the title series, Daigneault believed the Thunder would remember who they really are.
“These guys are easy to bet on… This is a great group of players, great group of people. And you know, we can’t be less than who we are — but we don’t have to be more. We just have to be who we are,” he said. – Rappler.com
