Mussatto: Think Mark Daigneault will shorten Thunder rotation in playoffs? Think again.

“Dance with who brung ya,” legendary Texas football coach Darrell Royal, the pride of Hollis, used to say.

Mark Daigneault’s grammar is a little more sophisticated than Royal’s, but as we saw in the Thunder’s Game 1 win against the Pelicans, Daigneault adheres to the Royalism.

Conventional wisdom be damned.

Of course Daigneault didn’t shorten his rotation Sunday night. The Thunder won 57 games in the regular season with Daigneault relying on a robust rotation in which everybody eats, and there was no reason to think he’d relent in the playoffs.

By playing 11 guys — nine in the first quarter — like it was December in Detroit, Daigneault showed he’s willing to ride with the guys who got him here.

“I have great confidence in our team, they have great confidence in each other,” Daigneault said Monday afternoon. “There’s probably a subtle pressure to cut it down arbitrarily, but they all played well last night.”

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Rookie guard Cason Wallace, who was in the closing lineup, led the Thunder’s bench with 19 minutes. Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe played 16 and 15 minutes. Kenrich Williams and Gordon Hayward played nine minutes, and Jaylin Williams seven.

The Pelicans, meanwhile, played nine guys, but really went eight deep. Dyson Daniels, as the ninth man, played three minutes of spot duty.

“I don’t think our roster really drops off in a way that makes it obvious which seven or eight guys to play,” Daigneault said. “It’s Game 1. We’ve played like that all year.”

All year? More like the entirety of Daigneault’s head coaching career. Unlike his predecessor and mentor Billy Donovan, there’s not a hint of rigidity in Daigneault’s coaching philosophy. Especially when it comes to substitution patterns.

Sure, we can predict when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will enter and exit, but who plays when off the bench is a nightly game within the game.

The Thunder sees competitive advantages in such sporadic rotations. It makes the Thunder hard to scout. It keeps guys one through 15 engaged in the game, knowing they could be called upon at any second. It develops depth and uncovers which lineup pairings work and which don’t.

And in a long playoff series, or multiple playoff series, it might have the unintended effect of keeping legs fresher than that of the opponent.

“Maybe,” Daigneault said. “That’s not the reason we’re doing it, but there’s advantages to having depth.”

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The Thunder’s bench outscored the Pelicans’ bench 24-18 in Game 1, an advantage I imagine will increase over the course of the series.

Wallace did his best Lu Dort imitation. Isaiah Joe’s shot was off, but he always poses a 3-point threat. Kenrich Williams is an enforcer, backup center Jaylin Williams knocked down a couple of 3-pointers and all Wiggins did was make winning plays. Classic Wiggins.

It’s become so commonplace for the Thunder to play 11 or 12 guys, Lu Dort didn’t even notice.

“I didn’t really pay attention to that, honestly,” he said. “For us, whatever player gets their name called, you gotta go out there and play hard.”

Wiggins has perfected that mantra.

“I think everybody’s ready and mentally approaching the game with the mindset that they might play tonight regardless of where they sit on the bench,” Wiggins said.

Again, none of this is new for the Thunder.

“I understand that there’s norms, but we want to expose ourselves to being the best team we can be,” Daigneault said. “We’re willing to do things a little bit differently, and if there’s a better course we’ll take it.”

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It’s hard to doubt Daigneault, who knows more about basketball than I know about, well, anything, but if there’s one quibble with the rotation it’s with Hayward. There were a bunch of goose eggs on Hayward’s box score Sunday, which has become the norm.

The Hayward trade was financially prudent and worth the swing, but Hayward hasn’t clicked no matter how hard the Thunder forces the fit. The idea of Hayward, a veteran who can playmake and shoot, rebound and defend, has not matched reality.

The Thunder had a minus-1.5 net rating in the regular season with Hayward on the court. With Hayward off the court, OKC’s net rating was plus-9.7.

Monday, I asked Daigneault what gives him confidence in continuing to play Hayward.

“I thought he was really good defensively last night,” Daigneault said. “I thought he was good on the glass. Good decision maker. We went small last night early, that was something we decided to do pretty early when we knew the opponent.

“And so you’re going Kenrich Williams at the five, and if you’re going small at the five you’ve gotta provide wing size with that. If you notice where his minutes were, he was out there with K-Rich and the small lineups and helped us on the glass in those situations.”

Of course there was a method behind Daigneault’s madness. There always is.

This is how Daigneault teams play. This is how Daigneault teams win.

Dance with who brung ya.

Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

Game 2: Thunder vs. Pelicans

TIPOFF: 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Paycom Center (TNT, Bally Sports Oklahoma)

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Mark Daigneault not bending to playoff norms with OKC Thunder rotation