Without surprise, Mark Daigneault was named “Coach of the Year”, with 89 “first places” out of 99 possible. A real plebiscite for the Oklahoma City coach, who led this very young group to first place in the Western Conference (57 wins – 25 losses) and who now leads 3-0 against New Orleans.
At 39 years old, the native of Leominster, Massachusetts, seems to represent a new profile in the NBA environment. And it was of course Sam Presti, the Oklahoma City GM always looking for new trends, who launched it.
An obscure assistant to Billy Donovan
When the OKC leader met Mark Daigneault in 2011/12, the latter was only an obscure assistant to Billy Donovan at the University of Florida. Sam Presti comes to “scout” Bradley Beal, who is spending his “freshman” season with the Gators being one of the most highly rated players on the university circuit. Mark Daigneault and Oliver Winterbone, a video assistant who would also join the Thunder later, asked the GM if they could ask him questions during his visit to Florida.
“We placed our chairs next to him and sat together”, Mark Daigneault would later tell. “We stayed in the (hotel) lobby with him until dark. I noticed the same things about Sam as everyone else when I spoke with him, namely that he was very intelligent, very curious and very humble. What struck me the most was the time he was willing to give us. Without compensation. He didn't know who we were at the time. It was from there that a relationship was formed.”
Sam Presti must have also seen something special because less than three years later, he would hire the barely 29-year-old assistant to take charge of the Oklahoma City Blue, the G-League team affiliated with the Thunder.
However, he is not the first to have seen something in Mark Daigneault. In Connecticut, from 2004 to 2008, the latter pursued a degree in education, and he became a “student/manager” for the university's basketball team, in order to help the players train. A fairly thankless role, at the complete service of the athletes.
“After a while, the guys leave” explains Jim Calhoun, three-time NCAA champion at the head of the Huskies. “Very quickly, instead of 20, there are 15, and they discover that they have to get up at six in the morning. »
Ben Gordon and invisible work
Mark Daigneault is not leaving. He learns, watches Ben Gordon work tirelessly on his game.
“He had a student/manager who took the rebounds for him” explains Mark Daigneault. “Ben Gordon would call him at two in the morning and this guy would come. Ben Gordon was there, he was doing a whole workout with the NCAA ball and then the same workout with the NBA ball. He had this incredible vision for himself. It was the first time I realized that there was a lot of invisible work going on. There's a reason why people are able to succeed when the lights come on, and he was the perfect example of that. »
The student/manager observes, learns and is offered responsibilities that go beyond their original role. However, at the end of his degree, he logically plans to continue with a master's degree in education. Will he be a teacher? No, his high school coach, Steve Dubzinski, told him about an assistant position at Holy Cross that was opening up.
Jim Calhoun and his deputy, George Blaney, encouraged him to apply. Mark Daigneault thus opened the door to the world of basketball, but it almost closed after three seasons, when the “head coach”, Ralph Willard, and his staff were thanked. The assistant then plans to return to school, but he has a mutual friend with Billy Donovan, the coach of Florida, and he knows some of his assistants.
“I wanted to keep one foot in the door”he explains, while applying for a place with the Gators. “I kind of pushed the door open and said, 'Hey, I'm here, I'll do whatever you want me to do.' »
Billy Donovan doesn't have a job to offer him, but he has a middle ground. A master's degree in sports management which allows him to be a sort of bonus assistant who gravitates around the team.
Like Darko Rajakovic, he is a “potential” in the eyes of Sam Presti
It was there, at the very bottom of the academic world, that he met Sam Presti, a little over a year later. Of course, he gradually gained ground, working on opponent scouting and player development, but he remained an obscure assistant when he took over as manager of the Oklahoma City Blue in 2014.
He succeeds in this position to Darko Rajakovic, the current coach of the Raptors, who was already a surprising choice on the part of the Oklahoma City GM. Like Mark Daigneault, he had crossed paths with Sam Presti a few years earlier, while he was a scout for the Spurs G-League team. But like Mark Daigneault, he was in the depths of the coaching hierarchy since he was coaching in the Spanish fourth division when the manager of the Thunder offered him the opportunity to coach his team in the development league.
“It was a recruitment focused more on potential than on our CV, for each of us. And it’s obviously had a huge impact on our careers.” recognizes Mark Daigneault who represents a profile similar to that of Darko Rajakovic. “I owe Sam a lot for taking a chance on me.”, appreciates the latter. “At the time, I was the first international coach in the G-League. He had a vision of the evolution of basketball in general. He gave me a chance and I always had great support from him and from the organization to be myself and to train the team as best as possible. »
This vision of the evolution of basketball is obviously that of coaches who are capable of “connecting” with the players and above all helping them progress. Great teachers who help their students master their subject, rather than generals who try to master their soldiers.
“His greatest quality, which fits with our team, is that he is able to understand us”, explains Jalen Williams. “I think that every time we can identify with the people we teach, we can go much further in progression… It makes us want to give our all for him. We players have done a really good job this year of expressing some things we would prefer to do in certain situations, and they are willing to listen and buy into some of the things we have to say, too. It's a good exchange. Relations between players and coaches have been good throughout the year. »
Trust and collaboration
A relationship of trust which allows Oklahoma City to try atypical things, in attack as well as in the management of the rotation or in the very construction of the roster, with a lack of size with which Sam Presti and Mark Daigneault are ready to live, because they feel they compensate in other ways.
“Coaches can lose games, but they can't win them”
“There is a tendency to want to coach too much, to want to be good at everything, to want to teach everything and to want to correct all the mistakes in a very imperfect game”assures Mark Daigneault, who learned from Jim Calouhn to set priorities. “In reality, you have to be really good at what you already know how to do.”
Lean as much as possible on the players’ strengths, develop them… and trust them.
“They deserve this trust”concludes Mark Daigneault. “There are limits to what you can do as a coach. Because they are the ones who must carry out the actions. They win the matches. Coaches can't win games. Coaches can lose games, but they can't win them. So they are the ones who need the confidence to achieve this. And they give me every reason to trust them. They are intelligent players, who care about the team first, who are competitive. They try to solve problems on the ground. And at the end of the day, we are in this together, we always work together to try to find the best option, and we don't care where the idea comes from. »
A real teacher, at the service of his students.
