Indiana Pacers<\/a> have caught fire at the right time. Tyrese Haliburton is the headliner, but the East’s fourth seed is rich with depth. Pascal Siakam has stepped up as the second-best player. Myles Turner and Andrew Nembhard have been complementary pieces.<\/p>\nIt’s also helped to have Carlisle as their head coach. If anybody can bring their squad an advantage from the sidelines, it’s the future Hall-of-Famer. He helped take down the Miami Heat in their first year with LeBron James. It’ll take a similar David-esque approach to slay the Thunder.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of respect for him. He\u2019s had an unbelievable life in basketball. When you look at all the things he’s experienced in his playing career and his assistant coaching career and his head coaching career. He\u2019s forgotten more about the game than most of us have seen,” Daigneault said about Carlisle. “I have a lot of respect for him. He’s the president of the Coaches Association. He’s got 29 really good relationships with the coaches and is in constant communication with us.”<\/p>\n
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Besides a few blips, Daigneault has made the right decisions in the playoffs. Let’s see if the national spotlight and the highest stakes possible in a basketball game will change that. Meanwhile, Carlisle should know what to expect at this point in the year.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: Mark Daigneault talks Rick Carlisle before Pacers-Thunder NBA Finals<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in the 2025 NBA playoffs, Mark Daigneault enters as the freshly-faced rookie. He coached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1784,7,2026,149,250,2559,126,185,1622,189,367,6,1220,11,179,279,1714,1139,278,3460],"class_list":{"0":"post-71059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-andrew-nembhard","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-chris-finch","11":"tag-dallas-mavericks","12":"tag-david-adelman","13":"tag-head-coach","14":"tag-indiana-pacers","15":"tag-lebron-james","16":"tag-mark-daigneault","17":"tag-miami-heat","18":"tag-myles-turner","19":"tag-nba","20":"tag-nba-finals","21":"tag-nba-playoffs","22":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","23":"tag-pascal-siakam","24":"tag-rick-carlisle","25":"tag-tuomas-iisalo","26":"tag-tyrese-haliburton","27":"tag-western-conference-finals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114611096492494750","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}