OKC Thunder Benefiting From Internal Coaching Development

Mark Daigneault is following what has been a successful blueprint en route to his role in Oklahoma City.

Thunder Head Coach Mark Daigneault enters his third season at the helm in 2022, beginning his tenure as OKC’s head man in the midst of a rebuild.

During the 2019-20 NBA bubble season, the Thunder went 44-28 and brought James Harden and the Houston Rockets to game seven in the first round of the playoffs. Following Oklahoma City’s fourth consecutive first round exit, General Manager Sam Presti decided it was time to part ways with then-head coach Billy Donovan, who notched a 320-234 record in his days with the Thunder.

To fully embrace its rebuild, Oklahoma City offloaded talented veterans Chris Paul, Dennis Schröder and Danilo Gallinari and began to stockpile young players and draft picks. The final step of the process was promoting then-35-year-old Daigneault, an assistant coach at the time, to head coach.

Daigneault’s coaching career began in 2003, when the Massachusetts native became a student manager for the University of Connecticut basketball team. Following his graduation, Daigneault was hired as an assistant coach at the University of Florida, where he began working under Gators then-head coach Billy Donovan.

In 2014, Daigneault began his professional coaching career after being named head coach of the Oklahoma City Blue, a role he held until 2019. Daigneault finished with a 142-128 record as the Blue’s head coach, leading OKC’s G League squad to the playoffs four out of his five seasons with the team.

The Thunder head coach isn’t the only G League alum to man the NBA sidelines, Toronto Raptors Head Coach Nick Nurse followed a similar blueprint in his path to the big leagues.

Nurse took over as the head coach of Minnesota’s G League affiliate, the Iowa Energy (now the Iowa Wolves), in 2007. In 2011, the current Raptors head coach was named D-League (now the G League) coach of the year en route to a D-League title. Nurse won another title in 2013 as the head coach of Houston’s G League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

Following his success in the NBA’s minor league, Nurse was brought onto Toronto’s staff as an assistant coach before being promoted to head coach following Dwane Casey’s firing in 2018. In his first season as an NBA head coach, Nurse led the Raptors to a finals victory over Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors.

Nurse has continued to impress in the NBA, winning coach of the year in 2020 and making three playoff appearances in four seasons as the Raptor’s head man.

Daigneault, however, has more history and familiarity within the Thunder organization, which the franchise hopes will make him the perfect candidate to return the team to its previous heights.

This offseason, Oklahoma City made more coaching shuffles and added two new staff members in another attempt to begin developing young players and coaches. Grant Gibbs, who began his coaching career as an assistant to Daigneault on the Blue, was named an assistant on the Thunder staff after serving as the Blue’s head coach for the past three seasons. Kameron Woods, who played for the Blue, will take over as the team’s head coach in 2022.

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