Sam Presti reflects on Mark Daigneault's journey from G League coach to NBA champion

USA Today

a day ago

Tied to the hip together, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Mark Daigneault have seen each other rise in their respective profession despite the odds stacked against them. The former went from a nice lottery prospect to an MVP winner. The latter went from an unknown hire to one of the best head coaches in the league.
While Gilgeous-Alexander gets all the headlines, Daigneault's fingerprints were all over the Oklahoma City Thunder's NBA championship. The duo has been together for the last five years. Easy to say now, but Sam Presti nailed the franchise star and head coach tandem.
Ask anybody in the NBA. The only way you can reach the mountaintop is by being on the same page. Nobody exemplifies that better than the Thunder. From a rebuild to NBA champions, they've had remarkable continuity that's rarely achieved.
"He's just been remarkable every step of the way. But he was remarkable when he was coaching the Blue. He's extremely steady. I think he has created an environment for the guys to have confidence," Presti said about Daigneault. "Obviously, we played a lot of guys throughout the year, and because of that, we had different players be able to perform in the postseason. It wasn't the first time that they've stepped foot on the floor together."
Nobody squeezes every drop of talent juice out of their roster like Daigneault. He thoroughly uses his 18 players throughout the season. He understands that the regular season is a grind and the best way to preserve your best players for the playoffs is by rolling out some of your end-of-bench guys to see if they have anything.
That's how Aaron Wiggins, Kenrich Williams and Isaiah Joe were unearthed as hidden gems. All three role players played vital parts in the Thunder's championship run. While most head coaches would trim their rotation down in the NBA Finals, Daigneault went into the double-digit number in Game 1 — for better or worse.
"He really understands, like, the lifeblood of the franchise is the development process, and he's able to really lean into that and foster that," Presti said. "That's how you have a guy like Ajay Mitchell play such a pivotal role until he was injured. On down the line, where you could easily get distracted by chasing outcomes, and that really hasn't been the case. But that's why he's the coach. But he's doing a great job, and I'm really happy for him."
You could see Daigneault's growth throughout the playoffs. Every point toward the Denver Nuggets series as the Thunder's reflection point, which can be extended to the coaching staff as well. More times than not, he pushed all the right buttons. From relying on the double-big lineup to putting Alex Caruso on Nikola Jokic for a Game 7 win in that Round 2 series.
"Sometimes it's not that you can't do it, it's just you haven't had exposure or been confronted with something. I think that was a big story of our team, and you could say for Mark or any of us in that respect. You can grow from experiences but you can also be limited by the experience you haven't had yet," Presti said. "Each time our team was exposed to something new, it wasn't seen as a problem or anything. I think the way we tried to reframe it was this is just the next thing up in our process to become a great team."
After an NBA championship, Daigneault was immortalized in OKC. He'll forever be known as the head coach who helped the Thunder win their first title. Initially viewed as a rebuild coach, he smashed through that glass ceiling and showed he can do both.