On the first play of their Wednesday night national showcase game in Oklahoma City, the San Antonio Spurs ran a lob play designed specifically for Victor Wembanyama. If you're going to begin a game by running a lob for one of the two best shotblockers in the NBA against the other, the most important thing to do is make you sure you drag that guy away from the rim. The Spurs did the right thing, shearing Holmgren from the ballhandler with one screen and impeding his path to the rim with a second, but by the time Jeremy Sochan lofted the pass, it was too late: Holmgren took flight and spiked the ball off the glass, then blocked the follow-up from Sochan. It was an assertion, a warning: More than one guy is pushing basketball forward on this court.
The story of this game was supposed to have been the rivalry between the West's two second-year superstar centers, which feels like it could quickly become one of the best in the league. Each would have entered the league a wholly unique player—each a lanky expansion into new frontiers of simultaneous size and skill—if the other hadn't have shown up at exactly the same time, the basketball equivalent of planning a surprise party only to get tricked into being the subject of one yourself. Last season, Wemby rightly won Rookie of the Year by unanimous vote; Holmgren was the second-best player on the top seed in the deeper of the two conferences.
The most significant difference is that Holmgren gets to play alongside an MVP favorite, while Wemby is stuck with a goober who shoots one-handed free throws. Another is their relative pedigrees: Holmgren is regarded as a very good, potentially great two-way player, while Wembanyama is widely considered the best prospect since at least as far back as LeBron James, the presumptive face of the NBA, a man responsible for rending the spatial fabric of basketball and creating something nobody has ever seen before.
That dynamic has made their head-to-heads quite tense, even in a rookie campaign they spent at opposite ends of the West standings. Wembanyama memorably got the better of Holmgren in a win late last season, during the two-month run when he put up unprecedented stat lines for what felt like every night. Holmgren and Wembanyama made a point of going at each other and trying to dominate the game, in ways that clearly stood apart from each players' normally facilitative tendencies. "Chet is not exactly Candyman, but Victor will not even say the man's name," ESPN's Spurs guy Michael Wright said ahead of Wednesdayt's game.
But only one guy showed up on Wednesday, and Wembanyama had to sit expressionless on the bench, career-low six points in hand, watching as Holmgren and the Thunder ran away with a comfortable 12-point win. The NBA even put Harrison Barnes's face on the YouTube highlights, because Wemby produced none. Holmgren was incredible for OKC. His box score—19-5-2 on good shooting with four stocks in 28 minutes—undercounts the number of blocks he had and only tells a partial story, suggesting merely that he was good on both ends of the court in the ways and degrees he was good last season. Watch Holmgren for a night, and you'll see that he's advanced his game in the offseason and is already playing a different, larger role for the Thunder.
Oklahoma City is an odd team, as head coach Mark Daigneault has pioneered (one could make the case that "imported" would be a more apt verb) the use of a huge rotation of players who are comfortable moving the ball, attacking driving lanes, and hounding ballhandlers on the other end of the court. You could call it five-out, as the Thunder's shot-creation engine did help the team lead the league in three-point percentage last year, but I think the more accurate way to characterize it would be something like five-toward.
Everything starts on the perimeter, all the handoffs, duck-ins, and screens, though the Thunder use all that space to get players with an advantage rumbling to the rim; they led the league in drives last season, and are slightly ahead of the pace through four games. To thrive in this offense, every player must be able to make quick decisions, beat their man off the dribble, keep the ball moving, and be willing to take and make open shots. That's a lot of perimeter responsibility for someone as huge and lanky as Holmgren, though he thrived as a shooter and a roll man last season.
The big difference this year is Holmgren's physicality. He's getting into the paint and trying to demolish defenders, putting his shoulder into people and doing his uncanny Kevin Durant cover act, snagging extra offensive rebounds and pursuing the defensive ones with noticeably more intensity. His defense looks more polished and confident this year, anchoring the league's best unit despite injuries to every single other big on the roster. Most of Holmgren's stats are up, but there are two that tell the story. The Thunder center is taking 41.4 percent of his shots at the rim, a 12-percent increase from last year, and he's turning it over five percent more often. I'll make the case for that increase being a promising sign, as it's the byproduct of increased aggression. Holmgren is flowing within the Thunder system while also seeking his own offense—which, since he can nail turnaround jumpers, splash threes, and break wing defenders down off the dribble, why shouldn't he? It's all super high-level stuff, done by a guy so determined and huge that he can pull off sequences like this against the MVP.
Qualitatively speaking, Holmgren is playing like a star, with all the aggression and competitive fire associated with that label. The guy who got bullied by thicker bigs and floated around on offense has been replaced by someone determined to get his, which redounds to his team's benefit.
The Thunder are the last undefeated team in the West, winning each of their first four games by 12 or more. They have swapped out Josh Giddey minutes for Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace minutes; despite the pressures of defending the one seed, they're still experimenting with the fifth starter slot and playing 10 guys at least 14.8 minutes per game. They are doing this all with injuries to Jaylin Williams, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Kenrich Williams, which speaks to how great Holmgren has been thus far. I just hope that when the Spurs and Thunder play again in three weeks, Wemby shows up, so these two can try to destroy each other again.
