Marc Daigneault I watched the play over and over again thanks to the video replay. Official Pat Fraher and his team remained glued to the same room. The two just weren’t looking for the same thing.
Maybe no one thought about what Daigneault was.
With 2:29 remaining and Oklahoma City up seven in its March 3 road win vs. Sunsofficials looked into what they thought was a blatant foul: Grayson Allen’s head collided with a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander driving downhill. Fraher’s team determined it was simply an offensive foul. The Thunder coach grabbed the hammer.
The second the last syllable of Fraher’s decision left his lips, Daigneault called a timeout. The weapons were then taken out of their holsters, the chess pieces were jumping internally – Daigneault went into trainer challenge mode. He wondered if it was even a mistake.
As he has often done this year, Daigneault won, sinking Phoenix even further.
“He challenged that one on his own, no one told him to challenge that one,” rookie Chet Holmgren said. “No one even knew he could challenge after the replay.”
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Daigneault established himself as part of the group of coaches who turned tough plays into a skill rather than a tool. With the importance of human judgment, it may be impossible to master the art of challenges. Daigneault got as close as anyone.
He is firm in his philosophy. Behind his discernment, an open dialogue with the players and a desire to take the game by the horns, he embraces the challenge.
“I like to go out there and get plays,” Daigneault said. “I really do. I like to be aggressive with it. You can’t take them with you. I don’t like to leave the game and not use it, and the guys know that.
Underneath the perpetual quarter-zip fleece and looks that could be misinterpreted as confusion is a coach who calculated the game with decimals. Underutilized assets, worked scenarios in percentages.
The NBA has known about the coaching challenge for five years, but coaches are still trying to understand its limits. Daigneault, however, had enough time to familiarize himself with its advantages. Every year that Daigneault coached the OKC Blue, the G League experimented with the challenge. And since he joined the ranks of the NBA, it has been accessible to him.
“The NBA is so competitive that you look for every little advantage,” Daigneault said. “And these are big games. You can take points off the boards, they can swing the momentum of a game. I also like doing it because it sends the message to officials that we are aggressive about this. I want the officials to go into the game knowing that we are a quick trigger with this.
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Daigneault’s discoveries gave rise to a points system. One that measures each challenge based on the circumstances of a game. Type of game, time remaining in a game, reward. Daigneault is not a loose cannon. But he will give up all probability if the reward seems to him to be gold. He hoped to have all the marbles that night in Phoenix, with Gilgeous-Alexander’s fifth foul in question and a few points up in the air.
He loves points. He hates the feeling of finishing a game without resorting to a challenge. Could he have made Tony Brothers sweat (or shrug) more? Could he have prevented Holmgren’s strapping protecting the jumps from being refereed in a certain way?
It’s a feeling he rarely wants to live with. And so, usually, he doesn’t. By the time Daigneault’s light bulb goes on, assistant Grant Gibbs and video coordinator DeVon Walker will have already looked at the play and let Daigneault know if he should commit.
Otherwise, there are rare occasions when players will probably have already twirled their fingers or looked towards the bench. That’s rare in Oklahoma City.
“Usually in the NBA, players are crazy and coaches have to tell them not to challenge,” Daigneault joked. “I think we have the opposite. There’s a maturity. They say, ‘Hey, calm down, killer.'”
Everyone – officials, players, staff – understands the consequences when they wave at the table. He is a fool who is crossing his fingers for the opportunity to tighten the rules if those in charge deviate from them. Its ears are also large for all members of the bench. He briefed Holmgren on the issues upon his arrival.
During the Thunder’s preseason visit to Montreal, Holmgren emphatically called for the challenge. Daigneault didn’t look at anything. Not the bench, not anyone else on the floor. He simply contested the call. Holmgren knew then how much his own judgment mattered and how great Daigneault’s confidence was.
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As trigger-happy as he can be, Daigneault has found balance while leading a group that understands the weight of their role.
“It kills me because there are guys who will really argue calls and you will look at the monitor and it will be a very clear foul,” Holmgren said. “But if I stand up and tell the coach to challenge him, especially because challenges are so valuable, I truly believe it’s not a foul and the game is going our way.
“The referees are going to watch a film. You complain to the referees, they will come back and see the play you are complaining about. If you’re more wrong than right, they won’t believe you anymore.
In the third quarter of OKC’s win in Phoenix, Gilgeous-Alexander and Lu Dort looked for Dagneault, wondering if he could burn a challenge. They argued against it. They preferred the in-between and low-paying challenges. Daigneault withdrew.
Players are careful what they wish for around Daigneault, their timeout calls as sacred as dragon balls. Daigneault is careful not to bury their wishes in vain and misguided attempts to embarrass a team of officials. Both parties are always attentive and the transparent dialogue between coach and player has reinforced Daigneault’s effectiveness.
“It’s all about education,” Daigneault said. “I just try to make sure the players know why we do what we do, even if it’s my decisions. You want them to be engaged in everything we do. I always make sure they know why we make the decisions we make. I give them my opinion if necessary. If (Jalen Williams) comes in wagging his finger and I’m not going to see the play, I don’t want him to interpret that as anything other than why I didn’t make it.
Daigneault does not want to complicate the idea. For him, it’s just an added advantage. But perhaps unbeknownst to him, it’s almost a science. A situation that many others have not yet dismantled to this degree.
“He’s probably bored in the crib,” Williams said jokingly of Daigneault’s attention to detail. “He is passionate about basketball. When you have coaches like that who love the game and are constantly trying to find different ways to attack defenses and make us better as a team, there are no limits. He does his due diligence for basketball, which requires you to love him.
There’s enough love for every official in the league.
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This article was originally published on Oklahoman: OKC Thunder’s Mark Daigneault aims to take on NBA coaching challenge
