The Thunder rallied around Chet Holmgren after a tough Game 7 loss to the Spurs.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Chet Holmgren attempted two shots in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. He absorbed plenty of shots from critics afterward.
The Oklahoma City Thunder spent Day 1 of the offseason making clear that they support him.
If the ballyhooed matchup in the West Finals was Holmgren vs. San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama, then it was a one-sided one. Wembanyama had the superior numbers in the series and the Spurs wound up prevailing, while Holmgren was barely a factor offensively with the Thunder season on the line Saturday night.
“Every minute Chet Holmgren’s been on the team, we’ve been the 1 seed in the Western Conference,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Sunday, when the team gathered for end-of-season meetings. “And it wasn’t the case before Chet was healthy.”
Holmgren had likely his best season, with career-highs of 17.1 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. He earned All-NBA honors for the first time, All-Defensive for the first time as well, got his first All-Star nod, plus was second in the Kia Defensive Player of the Year balloting.
He finished second in that voting behind Wembanyama — just like he did for Rookie of the Year in 2024, and just like the Thunder did in these West Finals.
“We need Chet. We need Chet Holmgren,” said Thunder guard and back-to-back reigning Kia Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. “Before Chet was here, we weren’t who we are today. We didn’t have the success we had today. When he’s the best version of himself, we’re the best version of ourselves and it’s no secret.”
It’s easy to envision the West Finals matchup — Thunder vs. Spurs — becoming a rivalry for years to come. Both teams have young, obviously highly talented corps, and now they have the ingredient that all rivalries truly need, that being a playoff matchup, to help provide fuel.
“I definitely think that they’re different in terms of I don’t think there’s another team that has their play style, their personnel,” Holmgren said. “They’re unique in that way. You can’t just kind of play like a base normal, ‘this is what we kind of do on an average Tuesday night’ type of thing.”
While the outside world might have looked at Holmgren as one of the reasons why Game 7 didn’t go Oklahoma City’s way, the rest of the Thunder disagreed.
Gilgeous-Alexander, for example, pointed to himself — and that was after he had a brilliant 35-point effort in the deciding game against San Antonio. He even went as far as to describe a second straight MVP season as “a failure.”
“I failed at my goal,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I didn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve, but through my experiences, I learned the most about myself and I make the greatest amount of increases I have in my career when I fail at my goal and don’t get what I want. And I look at this no different. I didn’t get where I wanted to go this season. There’s a reason for that. Now I have to look at that reason and try to make sure it never happens again.”
