Before Game 1 even tipped off, Mark Daigneault made the first chess move of the 2025 NBA Finals. He shocked NBA Twitter when he started Cason Wallace over Isaiah Hartenstein. He abandoned the double-big lineup in favor of a more traditional starting five.
The move wasn’t even necessarily wrong. The lineup data suggests the Thunder play better with Chet Holmgren at center. Meanwhile, the Holmgren-Hartenstein has been a positive lineup, but only by a slim margin. Holmgren at center or OKC going pure small-ball has run teams off the court.
Early on, the gutsy decision paid off. The Thunder caused havoc. The Indiana Pacers turned the ball over at a historic clip. They had 19 turnovers in the first half. They finished with 25. Lu Dort and Wallace forced the opposition to overthink elementary entry passes or had the ball ripped out of their hands.
The plan worked. Until it didn’t. The Thunder won the turnover battle at 25-7. They nearly tripled the Pacers. That helped them attempt 16 more shots. All of those variables suggest an easy blowout win. Instead, OKC left meat on the bone. It only scored 11 points off turnovers. Indiana’s transition defense erased several of its turnover mistakes.
That allowed the Pacers to hang around. They finished the game on a 12-2 run capped off with Tyrese Haliburton’s game-winner over Wallace. Meanwhile, Indiana destroyed the Thunder on the boards with a 56-39 advantage. Add in a hot night from the outside and math helped deliver a stunner.
After the Thunder’s 111-110 Game 1 loss to the Pacers, Daigneault explained his decision to go away from the same starting lineup he used through the first three rounds of the playoffs. For what it’s worth, I thought the decision made sense. The stats backed it up. The timeliness was a little surprising, though.
“I thought getting Cason out there really defensively giving us another perimeter guy for Haliburton and Nembhard, that was the idea there,” Daigneault said. “We’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.”
It’ll be interesting to see what Daigneault does for Game 2. On paper, Wallace’s start succeeded with its intention. They created plenty of turnovers and limited Haliburton for most of the night until the final second. But they couldn’t take advantage of transition buckets. It made the winning the possession battle null.
Then again, the Thunder were annihilated on rebounds. They finished with a small-ball lineup in the clutch. Both Holmgren and Hartenstein were off the floor. But that helped the Pacers stay in it with second-chance looks. Like Daigneault said, there are trade-offs to both lineups.
If the Thunder stick with Wallace as a starter, that means they think what happened in Game 1 was an anomaly. If you replayed the final three minutes, they’d come out with an ugly win 99 out of 100 simulations. Albeit, you don’t win championships with hypotheticals. Reality is, the Thunder are in a quick 0-1 series hole that they must get out of.
“I thought the guys adapted. We got off to good starts in both halves. We’ll see how the series goes,” Daigneault said. “We have a lot of optionality. We’ll look at everything. We’ll look at anything we can to try to give ourselves the best chance to win.”
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