Berry Tramel
OKLAHOMA CITY — Jalen Williams says he’s never worried about Mark Daigneault. Not in a Game 7, not in an exhibition game. Not on the court, not off the court. Not in a box, not with a fox. Not in the rain, not on a train.
“I don't ever worry about Mark not being prepared for a moment,” Williams said Saturday, the eve of the biggest game of his life, Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
Well, glad Williams feels good. The rest of us here in Thunderland, the coaching matchup seems a little concerning, not because Daigneault isn’t a rising-star coach — he is — but because the Indiana Pacers’ Rick Carlisle is an NBA sensei of the highest order.
Carlisle’s coaching chops have been on display the entire NBA playoffs, as the upstart Pacers are a win away from becoming one of the biggest underdogs ever to win the league championship. Indiana was the Eastern Conference’s fourth seed.
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Only two seeds worse than third have won the NBA Finals: the 1969 Celtics, 4-seeds, and the 1995 Rockets, 6-seeds. The former had Bill Russell and the latter had Hakeem Olajuwon. These 2025 Pacers are a hearty bunch of ballplayers, but they have neither a Russell nor an Hakeem. Carlisle has been coaching his butt off as the Pacers make big comebacks and win on buzzer beaters, change defenses and pass the ball like acrobats.
Carlisle is 86-86 in playoff games as a head coach. Daigneault is 21-11. That’s a 140-game difference for Carlisle.
“He's been definitely a calming presence,” Indiana star Pascal Siakam said Saturday. “He has the experience. He does a good job of preparing us for games. Not only just in terms of gameplan but mentally. He is definitely one of those coaches that … can just give you a good perspective on certain things. Preparing us for games and putting us in a mindset ready to just go out and be ourselves.”
This is no knock on Daigneault. He’s been tremendous in directing the Thunder, both during a rebuild and the ascension to this point.
Indiana supersub T.J. McConnell even called the Carlisle/Daigneault chess match the “best part about playoff basketball, especially playing in the Finals, just the adjustments and the changes that teams make. You've got two amazing head coaches going against each other, like Mark and Rick. They are obviously going to make adjustments and they are great at doing it. As a fan of basketball, it's cool to see.”
Still, it’s a little disconcerting to know that Carlisle is on the Pacer bench. Carlisle is 11th all-time in NBA coaching victories, with 1,079 combined playoff and regular season. He coached the 2003 Pistons, the 2004 Pacers, the 2011 Mavericks, the 2022 Mavs, the 2024 Pacers and now the 2025 Pacers to conference finals. His 2011 Dallas team won the NBA championship, as a big Finals underdog to LeBron James’ first Miami team.
It’s generally accepted that Carlisle has outcoached Daigneault in these Finals — Indiana’s full-court pressure on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, for example — but Daigneault has had his moments, too. Daigneault’s down-the-stretch move of an SGA/Williams two-man game flipped Game 4 and returned the Thunder to command of the series.
“Humbling,” Daigneault said of his coaching matchup with Carlisle. “Humbling. He's a great coach. Their team plays with a ruthlessly consistent identity. They really compete. They are never out of a game. They have done an unbelievable job collectively of building the team and perform the way they have to this point.
“There’s great coaches in the league, and he's certainly right at the top of the list.”
Daigneault is 1-0 in Game 7 coaching, the Thunder having routed Denver a month ago. Carlisle is 3-2 in Game 7 coaching, from Detroit’s 2003 first-round survival of Orlando to the East semifinals a year ago, when Indiana won in New York.
Carlisle, 67, says he loves pressure.
“As you go on in your competitive life in sport, what you learn is that these moments are rare, and trying to duplicate this kind of situation is something that you look to do in everyday life,” Carlisle said. “It's not easy to do that.
“So I'm very much looking forward to Game 7. The last time we've had one of these in the Finals, I think was '16 (Cavaliers-Warriors). These are special moments certainly for both teams but for our league, for the game, for the worldwide interest in the game. It's a time to celebrate.”
Daigneault, who has a more diverse roster and thus faces more rotational decisions than does Carlisle, says he feels pressure every day. Responsibility, actually.
“I always feel a ton of pressure, but the pressure is not external,” Daigneault said. “It's not like a game circumstance. It's not a situation. It's the internal situation of doing right by the players, serving the team, putting the team in the best possible position to be successful. Especially this team. It's a group of guys that I love coaching.
“I feel a great sense of responsibility to them, a great sense of responsibility to the organization, the city. In every circumstance, though. That's a fire that keeps on burning regardless of circumstance.”
Maybe we’re making too much of the coaching mismatch. After all, Carlisle’s playoff percentage is .500. Red Auerbach won big when he had Russell. Phil Jackson won big when he had Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. Gregg Popovich wasn’t all that successful after he went from David Robinson and Tim Duncan to Jakob Poeltl.
Coaching is “a small percentage of the game,” the Thunder’s Alex Caruso said. “I think it's largely decided by the players. Obviously, a good gameplan and adjustments are necessary. But I'd say a large majority of that is just the players playing the game.”
It’s like Williams said, “Mark is not going to have to make shots on Sunday.”
So Sunday night, when Daigneault makes his lineup decisions — Big or small? When to sit Gilgeous-Alexander? How much to play Aaron Wiggins or Isaiah Joe? — remember it’s not always the coaching decisions that determine the outcome. Usually, it’s the players who determine whether it was a good coaching decision.
And Williams said he has no worries about Daigneault.
“The way he attacks basketball from a coaching standpoint is the same way I approach basketball,” Williams said.
“I'm not too worried about the experience there. Obviously, Rick is another great, probably Hall of Fame coach. I think Mark is also getting better coaching against him, the same way we would as we get deeper into this run. I'm never worried about Mark and what's going on with him.”
What’s going on with Daigneault is that he’s about to coach the biggest basketball game of his life. But maybe this makes you feel a little better: so is Rick Carlisle.
berry.tramel@tulsaworld.com
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