The preseason is short; Mark Daigneault has a lot to teach new players, rookies
New Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault repeated a phrase at least three times in a press conference after the first day of practices in the 2020-21 season.
It was some variation of:
“We can’t allow the external circumstances to dictate our process,” Daigneault said, “and we can’t allow the external circumstances to speed us up.”
There’s less than a month between Tuesday, which was the opening day of training camp, and Dec. 22, the first game of the NBA season.
The Thunder return very few players from last year after trading the bulk of their corps. They have multiple rookies, many young players from around the league, and are incorporating veterans George Hill, Trevor Ariza and Al Horford.
All this, and the head coach is in his first-year of leading an NBA team.
Daigneault said the Thunder want to ensure players understand the tradition and standards of the organization.
“We try to really make sure that every player is educated on that and understands that,” Daigneault said. “If you establish that foundation now, you can really evolve and layer from there.”
Next, he needs to connect with them.
“Once we kind of show them who we are, we want to learn who they are. We want to learn how they can uniquely impact our environment, uniquely impact our organization,” Daigneault said. “The only way to do that is step-by-step.”
In the introductory press conference for Daigneault last month, general manager Sam Presti spoke highly of the coach’s relationship-building abilities.
That will be put to the test with a nearly entirely new group of players.
“When it comes to learning people and learning players and building trust, a huge ingredient of trust is consistency. It’s hard to prove your consistency in a relationship … in a week. It takes time. So we’re going to take that time,” Daigneault said. “We’re not going to be influenced by external variables that may try to speed us up.”
While the players are learning the Oklahoma City style and the organization is learning about them as athletes and people, there’s still the game.
Rookies in particular need to adapt to the game in a way no NBA draft class has been thrown into the league before.
“It’s not going to be a normal year,” Presti said.
Over the first six days of training camp, only individual play is allowed. Group workouts can begin on Dec. 6. The Thunder’s first preseason game is Dec. 12.
Draftees like Aleskej Pokusevski and Theo Maledon will be thrust into action immediately and not have the buffer time of a normal summer.
“Guys in draft haven’t played five-on-five, since, like, March,” Presti said.
“When you get drafted you generally have Summer League. You have a whole summer of development, one-on-one work, you learn terminology, you’re in your NBA environment. In case of Pokusevski and Theo, they are also going through a massive transition culturally. You cannot underestimate that either.”
So, as Presti said, it will not be a normal season, and the offseason is, as we’ve seen, completely abnormal.
The Thunder will do their best to prevent the sped-up pace from disrupting the disciplined approach of the program.
“You can’t press fast-forward on some of this stuff so we’re just going to be diligent, and do the best we can, and follow our process and not allow anything external or that’s outside of our control impact how we approach this,” Daigneault said.
