OKC tried to exploit a loophole in the NBA rules to stop Nikola Jokic

“There’s no rule against it, Mark,” Oklahoma City Thunder coach Mark Daigneault screamed at NBA referee Mark Lindsay after being assessed a delay of game warning while trying to exploit the league’s rulebook to stop Nikola Jokic in a way we have not seen before.

The tactic deployed was simple: keep a bench player near the scorer’s table so that the officials would have to allow the Thunder time to substitute during any dead ball.

Daigneault is right. As best as I can tell, what the Thunder did in the first quarter in hopes of slowing down the Denver Nuggets’ three-time MVP was fair game.

The reason for doing so is pretty straightforward as well. Jokic loves to take a dead-ball turnover or any other opportunity with a throw-in to huck passes upcourt on an unsuspecting defense or maneuver the meaning of the rules in a different way himself. Joker will often roll balls onto the court, waiting for his teammates to touch it since the shot clock does not start until a Denver player grabs it while in play. In some sense, Jokic has found a way to control yet another aspect of the game: the pace of re-starting play.

The thought is that Jokic would not be able to do the quick toss-in if Thunder are making changes at every dead ball—further, he wouldn’t be able to roll it either because the team could use the substitution time to set the defense and press.

Here’s the catch—the Thunder didn’t want to make those changes. Just a few minutes into the game, their players aren’t tired, and the team’s starting five, which has pushed OKC to the best record in the West, is on the floor. How can you slow Jokic with substitutions without actually making a change? Enter galaxy brain Daigneault and his end-of-the-bench reserve, Dillon Jones.

Jones has played in just one game, not in garbage time, since the All-Star Break, and it came when OKC rested all of their starters. The rookie first-round pick from Webber State was likely never to play, suiting for 28 minutes earlier on Monday for the Thunder’s G League squad. And Jones didn’t play in the NBA on Monday until the game was settled.

You might think that if Jones is in the ‘substitution box’, he must go into the game at the next whistle, but that’s not the case. According to NBA No. 3, Section V.F, “A substitute may be recalled from the scorer’s table prior to being beckoned onto the court by an official.” As long as the referee only allows the opportunity for a change and doesn’t force Jones into the game, the officials will be stopping play at every dead ball and looking to the scorer’s table to see if Jones will come in—which he won’t since Daigneault can pull him back per the rules, all the while the Thunder’s top defense can take an extra second to get ready against the NBA’s second-best offense.

“The permanent sub idea, the ball goes out of bounds in the NBA, and the officials are in charge of the pace when it gets in-bounded,” Daigneault explained. “Jokic is savvy, and if I was coaching Jokic, I’d appreciate him doing this too. But he gets the ball very quickly from him, and he starts the fastbreak. The officials start the fastbreak for him because he demands the ball, and they hand it to him, and he zips up the floor. We had a situation in Golden State a few years ago where we had a sub up, and they missed the sub because they inbounded the ball so quickly. So I put a sub up tonight, and I was like, ‘Hey, you’re going to have to call him in every single out of bounds in order to slow the game down if you guys are going to give them an advantage by handing them the ball fast.’ They delay of game’d that. I don’t know if there’s a rule against it—I think you can have a sub up and choose not to put them into the game. But it’s something I went to.”

While there is no rule specifically against this tactic, the delay of game rule under No. 12, Section II-A-6 says, “A delay-of-game shall be called for…A team preventing play from commencing at any time.”

So it seems as though both Daigneault acted within the game’s rules, and the officials fairly issued a delay of game warning after a few minutes of doing this during the action. And the Thunder stopped doing it after that brief stretch of attempting the tactic in the first quarter.

“That was a smart move by him, but I think the league wants to speed up the game, just taking advantage,” Jokic said with a smile. “You can see it with the five-second rules and not stalling—but last year I stole like 25 seconds on an in-bounds. Just speeding up the game and taking advantage.”

It seems Jokic genuinely enjoyed the chess-like moments around the rules. He had very nice things to say about the Thunder staff, who spent a bunch of time with him during the All-Star Break in the Bay Area. “If you’re a true basketball fan, you should appreciate them.”

This is the second time in recent weeks that teams have tried extreme things to slow Jokic. And he’s still not being slowed, averaging a triple-double while being top three in the NBA in the three major categories.

Here’s a good video of the whole substitution hubbub below

Wobvestigation: Mark Daigneault plays chess against Nikola Jokic. pic.twitter.com/4qrBzFNRKP

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) March 11, 2025

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