Chet Holmgren is a Liability, Not an Asset, for the Thunder
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I'm so excited that we are getting game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. The Spurs and Thunder have been the two best teams in the NBA all year, so it only makes sense that they are going the distance to see which team will represent the West in the Finals. But that is not the crux of my piece today.
Chet Holmgren is a good basketball player. He has his limitations offensively, but he is a force on the defensive end of the floor. He proved that and then some in the Finals last season. He was an absolute menace. I was actually ready to eat crow after his defensive performance last season. I thought he was going to be more of a liability when he entered the NBA. I thought he was too skinny and too limited to be a real force. It didn't help that he missed all of his rookie year due to injury. I figured I had him pegged. But then he stayed healthy and played well. I believe he was in the all star conversation the past two years, and he has become a mainstay on the all defense teams.
In this series all of the stuff that had me worried when he was a prospect is coming back to haunt him. He has been an absolute nonfactor in this series. The Thunder won't even play him as the only big on the floor. Victor Webanyama has been absolutely eating his lunch all series. Wemby is on the fast track to being one of the top players in all of basketball. He is an alien unlike anything else we have ever seen. The things he does on the court should be impossible for someone his size. But he does it and he is doing it all against Holmgren. It is wild to me that people tried to compare the two of them when they were coming up in youth, high school and higher level basketball. There's no comparison, and Wemby is making sure we all know that. There's clearly some animosity from Wemby that people would even consider these two players on the same planet talent wise. I love that Wemby has taken that personally, and every time he faces Holmgren, he is making it a point to not just beat him, but humiliate him in the process. The modern NBA has too many friendships. We need more rivalries like I watched when I was growing up. And it looks like, at least from Wemby's point of view, that he does not care for Chet Holmgren.
The most glaring thing during this series, it's not just Wemby who is abusing Holmgren. Guards on the Spurs are going right at him. Devin Vassell, in the game last night, went right at him when he was the lone rim protector and scored an easy layup. Stephon Castle, who has no fear, doesn't think twice when rising up at the rim to meet Holmgren. Dylan Harper, who has been going hard at Lu Dort too, has zero fear when going to the rim against Holmgren. It has been a masterclass from the Spurs at attacking the guy who is supposedly on Wemby's level as a shot blocker or disruptor. That notion has to be gone now. Even the most loyal Chet Holmgren fan would have to agree that this is now the case. And maybe this is just a bad matchup for him. Maybe the Spurs have all the right answers to the things he is supposed to be elite at doing on a basketball court. But he has just not shown the capability to be anywhere near Wemby's level in this series. Wemby is, far and away, a better basketball player, on both ends, than Chet Holmgren. I like Isaiah Hartenstein, but when he is the only big the Thunder trust against Wemby, what does that mean for Holmgren's future with this team.
These two teams are going to be at each other's throats for the next four or five years hopefully, and if Hartenstein is more reliable, maybe the Thunder need to look in a new direction for Holmgren. Maybe they can offload him to a team in need of a big center. The Thunder are going to have to make some hard decisions on key players soon, and maybe Holmgren will be at the top of that list now. He has not had a very good series. And maybe his luck changes, he hits some threes and blocks a few shots in game 7. But I would be looking into possible deals, which I'm sure Sam Presti is already doing, to see what the Thunder could get for Holmgren. He is simply not at the level he needs to be if he is going to be a formidable opponent to Wemby and the Spurs. And this series has shown us that tenfold.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing, the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast, and the greatest basketball writer on the internet.