Holmgren frequently appeared to be the best player on the floor in a game with the top two winners in the 2023-24 MVP ballot.
You may watch Isaiah Hartenstein for six minutes and understand why the Thunder felt they needed to replace him with a broken bone in his left hand when the team faced off against the Denver Nuggets at the beginning of the year. 1 grain.
It's not surprising that Nikola Joki gets precisely where he wants to go when he wants to go wherever he wants, as the three-time Most Important People do. However, it appeared as though you could see the limits of Oklahoma City's already-existing structure as he cheerfully slog through the visiting Thunder in the early stages of the third quarter, completely controlling the game.
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Indeed, having a Thunder act that wants to get five-out as much as possible can benefit from playing the highly skilled Chet Holmgren as your full-time center. But relying on a 7-foot-1 bundle of bamboo stalks to body up, block away and bear down on a large, mauling monster like Jokić all by himself— more than tag-teaming with another, burlier 7-footer in Hartenstein in the Length on the Ball with More Length Behind coverage the Timberwolves deployed so well in the 2024 playoffs — seemed like a recipe for getting pushed around in, giving up unpleasant rebounds and usually being unable to slow down a Denver offense designed to pulverize.
And then the match kept going, and it became apparent that, quiet as it's kept, bamboo's a devil of a lot stronger than it looks.
TNT color critic Stan Van Gundy said it several times Thursday evening, but only because it bore repeating: In a sport featuring the top two finishers in 2023-24 MVP voting, success Jokić and runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, it was Holmgren, only beginning his freshman season, who frequently looked like the best player on the floor. After that shaky early start, Holmgren shined, finishing with 25 points, a career-high-tying 14 rebounds and five assists in 36 minutes in a 102-87 Thunder win — an impressive, emphatic performance that, for most of the second half, did n't even feel as close as that final margin.
The 22-year-old persevered through Jokić's early bulldozing, committing to doing his work early — trying to get low and push the bigger man away from the basket so that he'd catch the ball farther away from the rim, and fighting tooth and nail to deflect entry passes into the post or at least make sure Jokić was n't getting a clean catch. He weathered the shoulder-checking, showing off impressive core strength to stay balanced so he could use his prodigious 7-foot-6 wingspan to continue to impact shots up high, even after he'd given up a step:
Jokic was on the verge of capturing Chet. twitter.com/QHISrdMRZz
— Oh Yes He Did ( @OhYes HeDid24 ) October 25, 2024
Holmgren operated as the primary matchup on Jokić and the last line of defense all night, and — with plenty of help from the Thunder's cadre of elite point-of-attack menaces — he was dominant. He grabbed 10 defensive rebounds and tapped out a few others, several of which limited Denver to one shot during the 18-2 third-quarter run with which OKC blew the game open. He finished with a game-high 11 contested shots and two deflections to go with four blocks and two steals, Denver shot just 6-for-18 with him defending the shooter, including a 5-for-11 mark ( 45.5 % ) at the rim, according to Second Spectrum.
Holmgren made his presence felt on the other end, too, leveraging the threat of his shooting — though he missed all five 3-pointers he took Thursday, basically the only thing he did n't excel at in the opener — and his quickness advantage to attack closeouts and get to his midrange pull-up. He rolled hard to the basket off the pick-and-roll, using his length and touch to finish through contact.
He kept Oklahoma City's drive-and-kick machine moving, facing up and applying downhill pressure to draw defensive help before spraying the ball out to teammates, he finished with five assists, a total he surpassed just five times as a rookie. And if he had a step on Jokić when the Thunder gained possession, he got on his horse— which must have been particularly painful for Nikola — and sprinted hard straight to the rim, sometimes with explosive results:
CHET HOLMGREN BLOCK & DUNK pic. twitter.com/osfNrPfWqJ
— Thunder Film Room (@ThunderFilmRoom ) October 25, 2024
With only one" true" big available because of injuries to Hartenstein and Jaylin Williams, Oklahoma City head coach Mark Daigneault almost equaled Holmgren's minutes to Joki's, a time when the offense has historically been at its peak. The Thunder allowed a microscopic 93.4 points per 100 possessions in Holmgren's minutes — several thousand miles below the top-five offensive mark the Nuggets produced last season — and outscored Denver by 14.7 points-per-100 in that span.
On the road. At altitude. Without the guy they imported, in part, for this matchup.
Holmgren's arrival last season provided a nitrous-oxide boost to the Thunder's rise up the Western Conference ranking partly because of how his presence on the perimeter opened up the floor for the sinuous and devastating Gilgeous-Alexander— who, in case you're wondering, is still firmly unfair:
What in the world, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander pic. twitter.com/MpNBNmiq2w
— Esfandiar Baraheni ( @JustEsBaraheni ) October 25, 2024
However, what made Holmgren's performance on Thursday so exciting was how confidently he led the charge to make Denver feel like they were half-court claustrophobic, how that fueled doubts about whether this version of the Nuggets has enough perimeter talent and outside shooting ( just 7-for-38 from 3-point range ) to compete with the best of the West, and how it at least disarmed what has been the NBA's most consistently overwhelming offensive weapon over the past five years.
" He was relentless tonight", Gilgeous-Alexander said of Holmgren after the game.
How much of the modern NBA's success is dependent on how much space is available: how much can you create and how much can you lose. A version of Holmgren that creates and erases it this effectively, this relentlessly, against this level of opposition can help Oklahoma City not just hold fast while Hartenstein heals, but feel confident in dreaming the biggest dreams the sport has to offer — All-Star berths, All-NBA selections and NBA championships.
All that feels very far off in October, after the first of 82. Good thing, then, that a 7-foot-6 wingspan can reach really, really far.
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