In 2022, there was a name on every basketball the spirit of the scout: Chet Holmgren. At the time, the seven-foot-one center was just a green freshman from Gonzaga, ready to enter the NBA at twenty. Everything was going according to plan for the Minnesota native: ESPN class him as the top prospect on their 2022 NBA Draft projection board. (“Numbers that will have a big impact.”) In the draft, the Oklahoma City Thunder selected him as the second pick. Then, before the season even started, Holmgren suffered a Lisfranc fracture in his foot. This sidelined him for the entire year. It’s the kind of injury that could – and very often does – derail a player’s career. But Holmgren is not that player.
“At first, when I was injured, I was worried about a lot of other things,” Holmgren told me, remembering the difficult, anxiety-inducing days and weeks that followed his injury. “By the time I was able to worry about something like that, the fans had already shown that they had my back, and that wasn’t going to change.”
Fast forward to this NBA season, that is, take two from Holmgren’s rookie year. Let me sum up one hell of a season for you: Holmgren had a major impact on a team with serious NBA Finals aspirations. The Thunder have the second-best record in the league, which is in part due to Holmgren’s skills as a rebounder, defensive presence and unusual – but certainly appreciated by the Thunder faithful – threat from the line of three points for a seven-footer.
“I don’t think any one thing can explain the success we’ve had so far,” Holmgren says. “During the summer, all these guys are in the gym working hard to get better. And I did the same thing last summer. When we started the season this year, we all had one goal in mind: to win basketball games.
Well, mission accomplished. Besides Holmgren, the Thunder have one of the most exciting young cores in the NBA. Twenty-two-year-old Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is already a candidate for the MVP title. Jalen Williams, also twenty-two years old, is downright electric. And don’t forget twenty-four-year-old Isaiah Joe, who is shooting 41 percent from deep this season. The team is atop the Western Conference standings and their youthful energy and fast pace of play have not gone unnoticed. “This is a situation that most of us are experiencing for the first time, and we embrace it,” Holmgren says. “We look at each other to understand things, if things are going well or badly. We’re just trying to get through this together.
Chet Holmgren had a double-double and four blocks against the Mavericks last December.
You know what they say about achieving a certain level of success in professional sports: with great power comes great responsibility… to appear in commercials. If you’re a March Madness fan, you’ll see Holmgren and Gilgeous-Alexander star in a new spot from AT&T, part of the company’s “Connect to the Madness” campaign. Finally prepare to have another jingle stuck in your head that isn’t the Burger King song. In the commercial, the Thunder stars sing “What a Player Wants” to the tune of Christina Aguilera’s “What a Girl Wants.” It’s cute, sure, but nothing like the chaos of the knockout tournament, which begins tomorrow. “The way the ball bounces off the rim can change the whole tournament,” Holmgren says, recalling his March Madness days. “It feels like the perfect combination of everything these teams have been working on all season, and yet the result is the most unexpected thing.”
Although Holmgren is excited to remember his time at Gonzaga, he still has a lot to look forward to this season. He participates in the Rookie of Year race alongside French phenomenon Victor Wembanyama. For almost the entire season, the media pitted Wembanyama and Holmgren against each other repeatedly, with each of their matchups fueling a day of ESPN programming. “The media has a job to do, and they’re going to create narratives between people, between teams, between anything,” Holmgren says of their rivalry.
It feels authentic, even given the intensity of the clashes between Holmgren and Wembanyama. Regardless, Holmgren has — if the Thunder keep playing like this — a long playoff run to prepare for. “At the end of the day, my job is to focus on the Thunder and how we can win basketball games,” he says. “That’s what I’ve done so far and that’s what I’m going to continue to do.”
Josh Rosenberg is an associate editor at Esquire and maintains a steady diet of one movie a day. His previous work can be found on Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.
