With the first month of the 2020-21 season in the books, it’s time for reflection. The OKC Thunder are one of the teams who’ll get plenty of accolades in the national media and they should. First, they came back from 26 points down to beat the vaunted Lakers.
Then they did it a second time by 19 points and carried on to win four games in a row. Not exactly what was expected from the youngest team in the NBA.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander got out to a bit of a slower start than anticipated after missing the second half of 2020-21 due to plantar fasciitis. In truth, it would’ve been naive not to expect him to need time to adapt. After all, he is the OKC Thunder offense on most nights, and with double and triple teams focused on him, his shot was going to take a hit.
For the most part, SGA has turned a corner and back to hitting with excellent efficiency including nailing logo triples in Staples Center no less. He’s also getting ample support from running mate Luguentz Dort who has scored 20 or more points in five consecutive games.
Rookie Josh Giddey who many scratched their heads over, now understands the rationalization from master magician Sam Presti in pairing a dime master with the hot shooting SGA. Both are lengthy guards which allows them to view the floor easily and one compliments the other.
How OKC Thunder head coach Daigneault ranks on B/R after the first month
Extending that thought process across the association with a view to how each coach has performed through the first month was the assignment on tap for Bleacher Report feature writer Mo Dakhil.
He examines all 30 teams from the perspective of how each coach has performed to date.
"Have to give Mark Daigneault a ton of credit for the start of the season the Thunder have had. They are 5-7 with two huge comeback wins over the Lakers. Oklahoma City even had a four-game winning streak, something it did not have last season. Daigneault has gotten the team to defend with much more vigor. Although it is a small sample size, the Thunder have a defensive rating of 107.5 to start the year. That is a big jump from their 113.4 rating last season. The next step for Daigneault is getting the offense on track. They are 28th in points per game and have broken 110 points only once in their first 12 games."
Dakhil looked at every team which can be viewed by clicking on the link above. He noted which coaches are getting the most out of their rosters versus those who could be doing more. With numerous new coaches this season there is a wide disparity of how the bench bosses are doing but Daigneault ranks high based on the above excerpt from Dakhil.
Moving forward it will be interesting to see what direction the OKC Thunder makes. If this is truly meant to be a tanking season at some point Presti and Daigneault will need to pull the plug.
It’s a catch 22 because this team is so competitive and respects their coach which is something many in the association have spent years trying to build into their culture and identity.
Based on what we’ve seen from Daigneault in his short tenure as the head coach he’ll find a way to balance between tanking, developing, and retaining that competitive edge. If anything, what the last two early-season starts have taught us it’s that Daigneault and this team may not be willing (or capable) of constantly tanking and losing. It’s simply not in their DNA.