No hint of regret lingered on Mark Daigneault’s face after a victory fell out of his pocket. No tremor shook his hands. No waver crept into his voice.
The Oklahoma City Thunder’s coach was born into the era of analytics, which claims it is a winning and smart strategy to hack opponents while up three points in the final seconds of fourth quarters. The era, largely, has been right. Because the logic is sound: Whittle away the clock before any attempt at a 3-pointer to tie, bury your free throws on the other end.
“That’s usually our deal, is to foul up three, and to play that game,” Daigneault told reporters after Nuggets-Thunder Game 1 on Monday.
The top-seeded Thunder stuck to its guns throughout one of the most dominant regular seasons in NBA history. It edged out the Clippers in March, Denver’s first-round foes, when Alex Caruso fouled Kawhi Leonard with 0.1 seconds left to make a tie virtually impossible. It closed out the Grizzlies in a four-game sweep just two Saturdays ago, in fact, when Luguentz Dort wrapped up Desmond Bane twice to kill most any time remaining.
On Monday night, though, Oklahoma City shot itself resoundingly in the foot. A few times. And Aaron Gordon put a raucous Game 1 to rest.
After a couple of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander free throws gave the Thunder that precarious three-point lead with 13.2 left, the Nuggets and Nikola Jokic breathing heavy down Oklahoma City’s neck, guard Caruso took a foul on Jokic. One problem, though: It came awfully early. Just one second ticked off the clock before Denver’s center went to the line, burying both.
A second later, Daigneault and the Thunder had simply outmaneuvered Denver. Nuggets coach David Adelman subbed Jokic for Peyton Watson for defensive purposes — only to watch as Gilgeous-Alexander flew down the lane for a jam to push Oklahoma City’s lead back to three. Suddenly, the Thunder had the Nuggets primed to run a last-second possession without their best player.
Except Caruso fouled again. Just one second came off the clock. Again.
Two Gordon free throws later, and Jokic was back on the floor with the Nuggets down one, and all this had happened in the span of exactly three seconds of clock. Denver sent Thunder center Chet Holmgren to the line, the game’s weight squeezing the 23-year-old’s shoulders, and he missed both free throws.
Gordon hit a corner 3, Oklahoma City’s Jalen Williams missed a last-gasp heave, and Daigneault was left to contemplate the broken shards of a game they’d held comfortably since the second quarter.
The Thunder coach seemed largely unconcerned with the approach postgame.
“I thought we executed the fouls pretty well, got the ball inbounds pretty well,” Daigneault said. “It didn’t go our way tonight. But it’s worked out well for us in the past.
“We’ll continue to look at it and learn from it. But, I didn’t think that’s why we lost the game.”
But it wasn’t that Oklahoma City fouled up three. It was how. And Daigneault, in another postgame-presser video from content-creator Michael Martin, called the execution of fouling in the backcourt “sloppy.”
“It wasn’t our cleanest game,” Daigneault said. “It was kind of a coin-flip type of game. We allowed them to get back in it and make a possession game.
“Gordon made a shot, credit him, and we just gotta be better.”
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