Mark Daigneault said the Oklahoma City Thunder are not locking themselves into one answer after Game 1. The coach said everything is on the table after the team’s defensive approach drew a close look, and he made clear the Thunder will keep adjusting before they play again tomorrow night.
Daigneault said the decision to have Chet Holmgren defend Victor Wembanyama during Game 1 was shaped by the regular-season matchups and by what the Thunder had seen in the first couple of rounds, both from themselves and from their opponent. He said those factors helped explain the approach, but also made clear that one game does not define the whole series.
“Everything is on the table. You can’t just throw one pitch throughout the whole series,” Daigneault said. The message was blunt: Oklahoma City is treating the matchup as a problem to solve, not a plan to protect.
He said the team’s job now is to identify what went wrong and move quickly. “You’ve got to figure out what the problems are and you’ve got to put the fires out pretty quickly,” Daigneault said. “That’s our challenge, and we got to work on that with the team today.”
The Thunder did that work today, and Daigneault said they will continue it tomorrow before going back out for Game 2 tomorrow night. He said, “We’ll continue to work on it tomorrow, and then we’ll throw our best pitch tomorrow night.”
That leaves Oklahoma City in a familiar place for a playoff team: with one result on the board, a tactical decision under review and a second game that could reshape how the series is played. The mention of the regular-season matchups and the first couple of rounds suggested the Thunder saw this coming, but Game 1 showed that reading the opponent and solving the problem are not the same thing.
The next step is simple and unforgiving. If the Thunder’s adjustments work, Game 1 becomes an early footnote. If they do not, Daigneault’s warning about not throwing the same pitch all series will look less like a philosophy and more like a deadline.
