Insider breaks down why Thunder's 'permanent sub' won't happen again
Today at 12:52 PM
After Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault revealed his "permanent sub" tactic in a 140-127 loss against the Denver Nuggets, the NBA world, including ESPN's Tim Bontemps, has spent the past 24 hours responding to the unforeseen move. In an attempt to slow All-Star Nikola Jokic from inbounding the ball before the Thunder could set their defense, Daigneault had rookie Dillion Jones stand at the scorers' to force officials to check in during every dead-ball situation.
Compounding the matter, Daigneault claims that Jokic will ask an official to get him the ball, expediting the process. This gives the Nuggets an advantage ahead of the Thunder, who are setting their defense. Tim Bontemps did some digging into the move's legality, per Brian Windhorst and The Hoop Collective.
"I checked on it a little bit, and you see teams trying to have substitutions during games, the refs will say no, you can't do it," Bontemps said. "It's because you have to be over there ready to go, you can't have the ball go out of bounds and than say, oh we're going to bring somebody in and have them get off the bench and run over there, but you can maybe have a guy stand over there and say hey we're going to wait till the next dead ball to do this. You're not allowed to have somebody just chill there. He did it to prove a point."
While we probably won't see Daigneault pull this tactic again, he got his point across. It should force officials to rethink rushing to get the ball to the inbounder, granting an advantage to the offense. As the Thunder's head coach pointed out, they control the game's pace.
Mark Daigneault reveals strategy to slow Nikola Jokic down
After the game, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault commended Nikola Jokic in his loss to the Nuggets.
"Jokic is savvy, and if I were coaching Jokic, I'd appreciate him doing this, too, because he gets the ball very quickly from them, and he starts the fast break," Daigneault said.
At the same time, in the visitors' locker room, Jokic complimented Daigneault for his savvy move with the officials, per The Oklahoman's Joel Lorenzi.
"That's a smart move by him, not gonna lie," Jokic said. "But I think the league wants to speed up the game, and I'm just taking advantage of it. You can see with the five-second rule, I cannot stall to inbound the ball. Last year, I stole like 25 seconds.
"They want to speed up the game, and I just take advantage."
The Thunder will face the Celtics on Wednesday.
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