Mark Daigneault's Relatability With Thunder Roster Guiding Team Culture
On a team with a majority of players under 25-years-old, the Oklahoma City Thunder's head coach shares the jokes and fun nature of his roster even with a significant age gap.
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault isn't that old ... right?
His 39 years of age may seem far and away from the Oklahoma City Thunder's average age of 23.4 years old, but Daigneault is actually one of the NBA's youngest coaches — making for a perfect match between both sides.
Per Thunder practice Thursday, Daigneault is hip to the ongoing rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, he uses Twitter to consume news and receive tweets from an unnamed player and shares similar humor with his roster. Many of the older coaches couldn't do that, but his relatively younger age helps increase the connection between him and young talent.
"He has a certain sense of humor that allows him to be able to interact with the guys," Wiggins said on Daigneault. "He understands things going on in our youthful world today."
The NBA's Coach of the Year may not actually know the titles of "Push Ups" or "euphoria", but that doesn't matter. His familiarity with things his players care about allows relationships to flow much better than if not. They can actually talk about things beyond just basketball naturally, a striking difference from other team-coach relationships.
It also incentivizes Oklahoma City's talent to rally behind and work hard their coach, even with things turn from jokes to serious preparation for the playoffs.
"We have a lot of straight shooters on our team so it helps when your coach is not beating around the bush," Jalen Williams said on Daigneault. "I think when you're trying to avoid confrontation on things that can help guys get better, it slows down progress."
The Thunder has the right balance of fun and seriousness to keep the morale high and focus on winning basketball games, which Daigneault has helped pioneer. With such a young team, he has to make sure his roster's mentality is set on the right things, especially now that they are in championship contention so early his tenure as head coach.
The culture that's been brewing in Oklahoma City over the last season has been pivotal in reaching the Western Conference's No. 1 seed. Of course an MVP-caliber season from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander amongst other award contenders helps, but without that foundation, getting there wouldn't have been as easy.
Although quiet-mannered on the surface, Daigneault has fully embraced being the Thunder's head coach. He should be in Oklahoma City for a very long time, as long as he stays up to date on trending hashtags.
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