{"id":83861,"date":"2025-06-07T23:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/83861\/"},"modified":"2025-06-07T23:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T23:49:07","slug":"why-thunder-went-away-from-chet-holmgren-isaiah-hartenstein-in-game-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/83861\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Thunder went away from Chet Holmgren, Isaiah Hartenstein in Game 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

To launch the biggest series of his life, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault<\/a> did something that many fans assumed he\u2019d be too stringent to. For the time in these playoffs, Daigneault turned away from his double-big lineup.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Isaiah Hartenstein<\/a> and Chet Holmgren<\/a> never shared the floor in Oklahoma City\u2019s 111-110 stunning Game 1 loss<\/a>, with Cason Wallace<\/a> starting in Hartenstein\u2019s place. Neither center played a full second in the final 3:24 of action. (Holmgren was available for OKC\u2019s prayer of a lob attempt with 0.3 seconds to play.)<\/p>\n

Daigneault didn\u2019t just opt away from his precious pairing. He went cold turkey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought getting Cason out there, really defensively giving us another perimeter guy for (Tyrese) Haliburton<\/a> and (Andrew) Nembhard, that was the idea there,\u201d Daigneault said postgame.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been pretty fluid with the lineup throughout the course of the season. Cason started 40-something games. We changed the lineup a million times. We haven’t in the Playoffs. That’s why we do it during the regular season, so that it’s not Earth shattering when we do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps not Earth shattering. Certainly NBA Finals<\/a> teetering.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CARLSON: OKC Thunder superfan using NBA Playoffs to get attention for friend needing a kidney<\/a><\/p>\n

Daigneault has been a proponent of letting a series speak to him before he acts. In the face of lineups that\u2019ve threatened the Holmgren and Hartenstein pairing, Daigneault has remained firm. And yet, before this series showed him anything, he looked it off. And for logical reasons, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Pacers have turned these NBA playoffs into the Churchill Downs. Their pace is befitting of their name, and their decision making is rapid. A split second loses you the race versus Indiana.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re late to close out, like Alex Caruso<\/a> was on an Aaron Nesmith 3-pointer with less than three minutes to play, the Pacers will burn you. Twitch the wrong direction, or even a moment late, and you\u2019ll wish whiplash was the reward. Should you miss a rotation entirely, sayonara.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And for the first half, Daigneault\u2019s change seemed to achieve defensive nirvana. To force a record 19 turnovers through 24 minutes in a Finals game is unfathomable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was when the turnovers halted altogether that Daigneault\u2019s preference of smalls grew questionable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jalen Williams<\/a> was the tallest Thunder player during the final stretch, a stint when Indiana kept forwards Obi Toppin and Pascal Siakam on the floor. Siakam had enjoyed switches throughout the night, a footnote entering the series and ultimately the cost of business when playing with small, pesky defenders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indiana\u2019s last turnover came with 9:45 remaining. Those last nine minutes, OKC watched the Pacers continuously move the chains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the final three minutes, when OKC went without a center, hustle plays pumped Siakam\u2019s blood. He seized a trip to the free-throw line on an offensive rebound, battered by the hands of shorter defenders. Later, Siakam secured another offensive board, pulling down Nembhard\u2019s airballed 3 like it was a deep route, before sealing off the pipsqueaks of OKC for a score.\u00a0<\/p>\n

REPORT CARD: How did Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, OKC grade out in Game 1 of NBA Finals?<\/a><\/p>\n

This was not Myles Turner. He\u2019d been tugged at and swiped toward, had possessions poked away that he didn\u2019t think were possible. Siakam, who contributed two of Indiana\u2019s five offensive rebounds in the fourth \u2014 the Thunder had just six boards total in the period \u2014 ended with just a single turnover.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being even a decent rebounding team hasn\u2019t exactly been the Thunder\u2019s sell this season. For a half, it floated on an ungodly number of turnovers, not to mention a boatload of hustle plays from Lu Dort.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other end, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> was left to break Nembhard\u2019s will as a 1-on-1 defender. Wallace and Caruso were his screeners. Wallace was left to roll, Caruso often shifted to the dunker spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In several instances where Caruso seemingly had an opportunity on the backside, Holmgren would\u2019ve surely had an electric lob to catch. Siakam knew as much, keeping a wingspan of distance away from Caruso.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In those waning moments, Nembhard held his ground. Toppin helped off of Dort from the right wing, with flashbacks of Aaron Gordon\u2019s placement on the floor in the Denver series. Nesmith, helping off of Williams from a pass away, basically interlaced fingers with SGA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Thunder missed every 3-point look it got in that window, outscored 12-2 to close the game. The Pacers willed those shots in the way they have for an entire postseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hartenstein and Holmgren looked on from the sidelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am here to do whatever is best for the team,\u201d said Hartenstein, who finished with nine points and nine rebounds, a plus-two in Thursday\u2019s game. \u201cI trust Mark and I think, again, it\u2019s worked in the past. (Wallace) has been amazing throughout the playoffs. He\u2019s been amazing when he started in the regular season. So I don\u2019t think that contributed to us losing the game. We had control over the game the whole game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daigneault\u2019s first chess move of the series was perhaps his most surprising. Before these Pacers could even get off to the races, Daigneault adjusted his runners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his world of fluidity, where rigidity is a swear word, Daigneault stood 10 toes on small-ball.<\/p>\n

Joel Lorenzi\u00a0covers the Thunder and NBA for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joel? He can be reached at jlorenzi@oklahoman.com or on X\/Twitter at\u00a0@joelxlorenzi. Sign up for the\u00a0Thunder Sports Minute newsletter<\/a>\u00a0to access more NBA coverage. Support Joel’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a\u00a0digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

MUSSATTO: Deja vu for Thunder with another Game 1 meltdown in playoffs, now in NBA Finals<\/a><\/p>\n

Latest OKC Thunder news in NBA Finals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To launch the biggest series of his life, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault did something that many fans assumed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2126,407,328,7,408,311,2127,1501,257,948,2125,113,126,947,949,832,364,70,85,6,1220,11,62,67,310,179,61,81,114,258,279,259,66,83,55,2128,312,256,278,833],"class_list":{"0":"post-83861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alex","10":"tag-alex-caruso","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-caruso","13":"tag-city","14":"tag-enabled","15":"tag-finals","16":"tag-haliburton","17":"tag-hartenstein","18":"tag-highlights","19":"tag-indiana","20":"tag-indiana-pacers","21":"tag-isaiah","22":"tag-isaiah-hartenstein","23":"tag-jalen","24":"tag-jalen-williams","25":"tag-national","26":"tag-national-sports","27":"tag-nba","28":"tag-nba-finals","29":"tag-nba-playoffs","30":"tag-neutral","31":"tag-news","32":"tag-oklahoma","33":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","34":"tag-overall","35":"tag-overall-neutral","36":"tag-pacers","37":"tag-pascal","38":"tag-pascal-siakam","39":"tag-siakam","40":"tag-sports","41":"tag-sports-news","42":"tag-story","43":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","44":"tag-thunder","45":"tag-tyrese","46":"tag-tyrese-haliburton","47":"tag-williams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83861","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=83861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}