Before Mark Daigneault programmed bits of his mindset into Isaiah Hartenstein, the 26-year-old center had a question for his new coach.

“I asked him what do you think it takes to take the next step to win a championship,” Hartenstein recalled Saturday during his introduction with the Thunder. “His biggest thing was the process, not skipping steps. … A lot of people try to tell you a story or we do this to win a championship, but him coming in saying we have to take it step by step was great.”

It was refreshing for Hartenstein, who had his distant impressions of the Thunder confirmed in early interactions. From afar, Hartenstein saw a young core that was youthfully exuberant but hardly immature. He saw a capable group, one that’d been through a depressing pair of down seasons in order to reach this stage.

“I think they were doing it the right way,” said Hartenstein, who joined OKC in free agency on a reported three-year, $87-million contract. “I feel like they weren't trying to rush steps. I think every year you kind of saw them take the next step.

“I think every time you see them go on the court, there's a certain competitiveness always to them. They're very excited for each other, and I think in the NBA you don't have that a lot where no matter who's doing good, the whole team is excited for each other.”

Hartenstein is part of that now, somewhere in the middle of the pack inside one of the NBA’s youngest cores. That’ll be him soon, fielding questions about how youth correlates to winning, and how much experience factors into OKC’s journey as possible Western Conference favorites.

He’ll answer the way the rest of the young bulls have become accustomed to.

“We're a great team, but I feel like, again, like Mark said before, it's a process,” he said. “We're 0-0 now, so going in and saying, oh, we're going to win a championship right away, I feel like that's the wrong approach.”

More: Will OKC Thunder be team to beat in Western Conference next season? Handicapping NBA odds

Joel Lorenzi covers 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 @jxlorenzi. Support Joel's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Isaiah Hartenstein says OKC Thunder 'not skipping steps' to contend