Head coach Mark Daigneault and the Oklahoma City Thunder defeated the Houston Rockets 126-107 in their eighth regular-season win. The star pair of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren scored 29 points apiece, combining for 58, and Jalen Williams contributed 14 points in another double-digit Thunder victory of an unheralded start. The Rockets kept the game close through two and a half quarters before Oklahoma City ran ahead with a 75-51 lead at halftime and never looked back.
Not even in the final frame, with a 20+ point advantage. The Thunder’s effort never wavered, which Daigneault says is a testament to his team’s character
“Well, that’s who these guys have been for a long time,” Daigneault said. “We were winning 20 games, and they were contesting at the rim and diving on loose balls. These guys have always had high, high competitive character. But we want to play to our standards. That’s how you improve. We want to be a team that gets better. We’re not hyperfocused on the sample size or the opponent right now. We want to get better through all of our experiences, and you don’t do that by playing the scoreboard or taking your foot off the gas.
“We weren’t perfect on that tonight. You’re never going to be perfect in 48 minutes, but I thought we did a nice job of that,” Daigneault concluded.
The Thunder’s top-ranked defense again dominated, holding Rockets guard Jalen Green to 14 points on 5-of-14 shooting and Alperen Sengun to 11 points on 3-of-12 attempts in the frontcourt. Sengun also finished with a pair of turnovers.
Mark Daigneault’s nine-game Thunder evaluation
With an 8-1 record, head coach Mark Daigneault and the Thunder returned to their winning ways following a historic seven-game win streak to start 2024-25. However, in the early days of an 82-game NBA regular season, Daigneault isn’t fixated on what the statistical data is telling him about the nine-game sample size but rather his team’s continuity and style of play regardless of which team the Thunder are facing or what the scoreboard reads.
“Honestly, I just evaluate, especially this early in the year, [our] identity as a team. We’re really super focused on that right now,” Daigneault said after Friday’s win. “Are we competing every night and doing it as a team? And those things are in feel. No metric is going to tell you that. Everybody feels it when we’re competing together and, for the most part, through nine games.”
The Thunder will continue their six-game homestand — the longest of the regular season — against the Warriors on Sunday.
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