OKC Thunder: Time to rewind on big season, playoffs vs. Mavericks and Shai
Mark Daigneault's exit interview was nothing but interesting. Let's dive in.
How a Thunder season comes to an end changes from year to year, but what the team does the next day doesn't vary.
The Thunder always does its end-of-season exit interviews the morning after the final game, and so it was after the Mavs ended the Thunder's playoff run Saturday night. Bright and early Sunday morning, Mark Daigneault kicked off what became a day-long parade of interviews.
Because the Thunder coach always has interesting things to say, I thought I'd share a transcript of his interview session complete with questions and answers, then my thoughts about what he had to say. But because Daigneault had so much to say — and it's all good, interesting stuff — we're going to divide this into two posts.
(And hey, if you like what you see today, please consider sharing this with a friend and encouraging them to subscribe so they can see Part II.)
Let's get going with Part I.
DAIGNEAULT: Start with some thank yous before we get going. I want to thank our fans. Obviously, there's a special bond between the team and the fans. The fans at the airport last night, the fans in the stands, especially during the playoffs, and then in their living rooms, hopefully families get to bond over this team, and hopefully we represent the community well and make them proud.
I want to thank you guys for your coverage and interest and being a conduit for the fans and for your professionalism and respect during the course of the season.
I want to thank Mr. (Clay) Bennett and Sam (Presti) for the resources and support that we get. Everybody in the organization — players, staff, coaches — we get to do our best work and have every opportunity to do our best work because of this important resourcing we get from the top, and we don't take that for granted one day.
I want to thank our staff, coaches, medical performance, operations, PR — everybody that's moving with the team for months of time away from the family and full commitment to our players and coaches that just allow us to put our head down and focus on competition. I want to thank the front office, everybody that does all the invisible work, put us in position to be successful. We have first-class people here that deserve acknowledgment.
Finally, I just want to ... thank our players. Special group of people. Special season. We believe we're building something special as well, and it's all because of them, because of the people they are, the way they go about their business. I'm just humbled to be able to coach them. It's a privilege, like I said, to coach them, and I'm very thankful for the experience we all had this year because of them.
My take: Daigneault is the most real coach in Thunder history. So down to earth. So personable. It doesn't surprise me that he would thank folks, but still, it's nice to hear him hand out flowers like this, especially to the fans. I love that he mentioned people sitting in their living rooms and how they connect with the team, too. Very cool.
What have you learned about this team in the playoffs?
DAIGNEAULT: I would zoom it out. ... I think this time of year, obviously it's fresh, but if you look a year ago at the trajectory of the team, the trajectory of individual players, the growth of the team, I think we made a ton of progress. Now, at the end of every season, you're never like putting the finishing touches on the picture under any circumstance. So we have a long way to go, and we have a lot of progress in front of us and a long road to do that.
But I'm incredibly encouraged by the progress we did make in that. These are high-level games that taught individual players where they need to improve. They taught us as a team where we need to improve. We'll learn those lessons as we let it sink in. I think it's important to also take a step back and look at the big picture. The big picture is very encouraging.
My take: The growth curve of both individual players and the team as a whole has been dramatic. But there's a whole new learning that comes in the playoffs. There were situations that a bunch of the players — Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren, Josh Giddey, Cason Wallace, Aaron Wiggins — had never experienced. The same is true of Daigneault as a head coach; he was an assistant on previous Thunder playoff teams, but he'd never been the one making all the decisions. In a similar vein, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had never played in the playoffs as The Man. Now, he, like so many others involved with the Thunder, has a better understanding. They'll all be better for it.
I was going to ask specifically about the possible launching pad that this can be. Being in Dallas, being in those situations, for a group of young guys who are going to be together for a while, how can you take this and push forward?
DAIGNEAULT: I wouldn't limit it to this playoff run. It's not a singular point in time that's the launching pad. This has been a deliberate build over four years that some of these guys have been a part of, and most of them have come on board over that time. It's been incremental. I would say we've had a very consistent environment. We've had very high standards that our players have met and exceeded, and that puts us in positions to continue to grow and progress.
As we move forward, that's what we need to double down on, is meeting those standards, being together, competing together, professionalism, attacking the program — all the things that we've been about for four years, we just have to double down on moving forward. That's what's yielded the growth and success that we've had, and if we want to have growth and success in the future, that's what we have to invest in.
My take: We used to talk about what a developmental franchise the Thunder was. We'd marvel at the way players like Russell Westbrook and James Harden and Serge Ibaka and others were developed under Scott Brooks. The same was true for players like Steven Adams and Jerami Grant under Billy Donovan. Don't look now, but Thunder U is as robust as ever under Daigneault.
How would you answer those who say you should have made a move at the trade deadline and get a big that would have helped you out this time of year?
DAIGNEAULT: I said this last night, going into the playoffs, at the point in the regular season, I thought we had everything we needed with this team to be the best team that we could. We proved in the regular season with the season we had that there's no one we couldn't beat literally. It's just never my mentality to look left and right. Looking right in front of me, we had everything we needed. We had a special group of guys.
Part of what made them special is how they operated collectively. I thought from a team standpoint, we had what we needed to win this series, and we ran into a team that played better than we did. But I don't think that's an indictment on the roster. I don't think that's an indictment on any individual person or where we are. It's simply we could have played better in the series, but it wasn't an indictment on anything else.
My take: Two things can simultaneously be true: the Thunder had a splendid team, but the Thunder also needed another big man for the playoffs. Playoff basketball is different than regular-season basketball. When opponents figure out a way to hammer your weaknesses, they'll keep swinging until they knock you out. The Thunder didn't have the inside size either to slow the Mavs' pick-and-roll game, which led to a lot of lob dunks, or to rebound consistently against Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively. What's more, in the West, there are more top teams with talented bigs. Minnesota. Denver. To name a few. So if OKC wants to compete in the postseason, it's got to get bigger inside.
It's easy for a crop of young guys to get a one-track mind and only focus on how to get their career started. A guy like Shai to focus on trying to get awards and everything. Chet trying to establish themselves in the NBA. You did a really good job managing all of those personalities, making sure they stayed on track. I know you talk about how it's mostly all them, but what role did you feel like you played in helping them stay within the team?
DAIGNEAULT: I use the word "uncommon" a lot. I think what made this team uncommon is NBA players could potentially look at themselves as independent contractors because of just the nature of the business. It can bite into a person's ability to connect to a team and commit to a team, and this is a group of guys that, even at a young point in their careers with a lot of ambition, they were willing to put the team first. They were willing to make individual sacrifices for the good of the team and bet on the team, and these guys did that this year and last year and the year before. I think these last two years specifically have shown the power of that. When you're willing to prioritize the team, you're willing to prioritize team success and maybe put a little bit of your individual self aside to do that, these guys put their money where their mouth is on that. The results speak for themselves from a team standpoint.
To answer your question, my job in that is just to guide that process. I can't ... there's no individual person that can make them do that. They have to want to do that. They have to want to commit to that. And to the credit of the players, they did. They deserve the credit for what we accomplished this season.
My take: Denver won the championship last season and was a contender this season because its players have bought into this concept. Team before me. Usually, taking that approach requires older guys who have tried it the other way but then understand how the selflessness is key. The Thunder has figured that out early. I give lots of credit to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the team's approach because even though he's clearly the tip of the spear, he doesn't seek out accolades or limelight. That attitude trickles down, and because of it, the Thunder rebuild is lightyears ahead of where it would be otherwise.
What kind of luck is it to get a guy like Shai? A guy who, when he comes in, he may not be the same person that he was five years ago as he is now, but the fact that he stayed on track, stayed within the team no matter what.
DAIGNEAULT: With Shai and all of those guys, I don't think any of that is an accident. Them prioritizing the team, prioritizing team success is difficult, especially in the NBA environment that we're in, but it's also in their total control and our total control. They did that, like I said, to an unbelievable extent. You mentioned Shai. From Shai to every other player on the team. Again, that's what made this group of guys uncommon, their willingness to put team success and each other, the team ahead of individual pursuits.
My take: I rest my case with my previous comment.
You talked about these guys as being intrinsically motivated, the way that you're describing them. You're talking about not looking left or right. Having that in the building, how much does that make you look forward to this summer and what's possible for these guys as they work on their games, as they get back together at certain times to work collectively?
DAIGNEAULT: The first thing now is everybody's got to get away and take a little time. It's obviously important for rejuvenation. I also think it's important for reflection. The day after the season is not the best time to really extract the lessons from a long 82-game season. I think a little bit of distance is healthy. Then when you return to your work, you return to it with kind of fresh eyes, and that includes our players.
These guys have proven that with time in the summer, they improve their bodies, they improve their minds, they improve their skills. They improve their games from a stylistic standpoint, and they walk back in the gym in September better than they left it, in this case, May. That's what I'm most excited about is just cutting these guys loose and letting them do their thing because they've proven time and again that with time and a solid plan, they change and evolve in a positive way, especially with how young the team is.
My take: The player who I'm most curious to see what improvements they make in the offseason? Chet Holmgren. The guy is a basketball nerd. Everyone around the team says he sinks himself into the game in a way that is next level. So, after his first season in the NBA, what did he learn? What will he work on? What will he drill and change and perfect? I'm really curious to see.
I'm not sure about Shai's presser last night, but he took this extreme level of ownership over the call, the final sequence.
DAIGNEAULT: The foul?
Yes, the foul. Just he even said something like he felt — it was a certain feeling behind it because the season kind of ended in his hands. Hearing that, what do you feel about that, hearing just the ownership he took over that sequence and everything else?
DAIGNEAULT: I'm not surprised because it's him, but ... at the end of the day, Dallas, over the course of the series, I thought, played better than we did. And they proved that with the way the outcome of the series was. That doesn't come down to one game. That doesn't come down to one play.
Then the other thing I'd say is you're catching us right after the game. Even today, you're catching us right after the game. We're incredibly disappointed with the outcome of the series and with the way the season ended, but I think it's important to take a step back and understand that we put ourselves in a position to be disappointed in the second round of the playoffs. The reason we're disappointed is because we had a special group of guys that had a special season, and nobody wanted that to end. Speaking for myself, it was as much that as it is advancing in the playoffs, I just want to be around these guys every day. I'm as disappointed as anybody that I don't get to coach this team this season anymore because I took great pleasure in that every single day. So I think you're getting a little bit of that emotion, but it never comes down to one play. The game is too vast for that to be the case.
My take: I could make a snarky comment about how one team's superstar in the Thunder-Mavs series took responsibility for a foul while the other team's superstar was always complaining about them. But me? Make a snarky comment about Luka Doncic always complaining, always throwing up his hands, always looking at the referees, always flailing on the floor and begging for a call? Nah. I wouldn't do that.
Instead, I'll say that this team really does seem to get along. I'm sure there's decent. Can't spend as much time together as an NBA team does and not have some moments of friction. But big picture, the players and the coaches genuinely seem to like each other. Not sure what value that has moving forward — because there are plenty of examples of teams that wanted to rip each other's eyes out winning titles — but it would seem a good work environment would be better than a tense, adversarial one.
I'll have the second part of Daigneault's presser soon.
Stay tuned.