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<\/p>\nOklahoma City Thunder\u2019s Isaiah Hartenstein (55), Aaron Wiggins (21), and Chet Holmgren (7) watch the closing moments of their loss to the San Antonio Spurs through the second half of Game 7 of the Western Conference finals of the NBA basketball playoffs series, Saturday, May 30, 2026, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo\/Tony Gutierrez)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Chet Holmgren attempted two shots in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals. He absorbed loads of shots from critics afterward.<\/p>\n
And the Oklahoma City Thunder spent Day 1 of the offseason making clear that they support him.<\/p>\n
If the ballyhooed matchup within the West finals was Holmgren vs. San Antonio\u2019s Victor Wembanyama, then it was a one-sided one. Wembanyama had the superior numbers within the series and the Spurs wound up prevailing, while Holmgren was barely an element offensively with the Thunder season on the road Saturday night.<\/p>\n
READ: Wembanyama, Spurs dethrone Thunder in Game 7 to succeed in NBA Finals<\/h4>\n
\u201cEvery minute Chet Holmgren\u2019s been on the team, we\u2019ve been the 1 seed within the Western Conference,\u201d Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Sunday, when the team gathered for end-of-season meetings. \u201cAnd it wasn\u2019t the case before Chet was healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holmgren had likely his best season, with career-highs of 17.1 points and eight.9 rebounds per game. He made All-NBA for the primary time, All-Defensive for the primary time as well, got his first All-Star nod, plus was second within the Defensive Player of the Yr balloting.<\/p>\n
He finished second in that voting behind Wembanyama \u2014 identical to he did for Rookie of the Yr in 2024, and identical to the Thunder did in these West finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want Chet. We want Chet Holmgren,\u201d Thunder guard and back-to-back reigning NBA Most Helpful Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said. \u201cBefore Chet was here, we weren\u2019t who we’re today. We didn\u2019t have the success we had today. When he\u2019s the most effective version of himself, we\u2019re the most effective version of ourselves and it\u2019s no secret.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to ascertain the West finals matchup \u2014 Thunder vs. Spurs \u2014 becoming a rivalry for years to return. Each teams have young, obviously highly talented corps, and now they’ve the ingredient that each one rivalries truly need, that being a playoff matchup, to assist provide fuel.<\/p>\n
READ: NBA: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander suggestions his cap after Game 7 loss<\/h4>\n
\u201cI definitely think that they\u2019re different when it comes to I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one other team that has their play style, their personnel,\u201d Holmgren said. \u201cThey\u2019re unique in that way. You possibly can\u2019t just type of play like a base normal, \u2018that is what we type of do on a mean Tuesday night\u2019 kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while the skin world might need checked out Holmgren as considered one of the the reason why Game 7 didn\u2019t go Oklahoma City\u2019s way, the remainder of the Thunder disagreed.<\/p>\n
Gilgeous-Alexander, for instance, pointed to himself \u2014 and that was after he had an excellent 35-point effort within the deciding game against San Antonio. He even went so far as to explain a second straight MVP season as \u201ca failure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI failed at my goal,\u201d Gilgeous-Alexander said. \u201cI didn\u2019t achieve what I wanted to realize, but through my experiences, I learned probably the most about myself and I make the best amount of increases I even have in my profession after I fail at my goal and don\u2019t get what I need. And I have a look at this no different. I didn\u2019t get where I desired to go this season. There\u2019s a reason for that. Now I even have to take a look at that reason and take a look at to make certain it never happens again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Oklahoma City Thunder\u2019s Isaiah Hartenstein (55), Aaron Wiggins (21), and Chet Holmgren (7) watch the closing moments of their loss to the San Antonio Spurs through the second half of Game 7 of the Western Conference finals of the NBA basketball playoffs series, Saturday, May 30, 2026, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo\/Tony Gutierrez) OKLAHOMA CITY […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":344058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[1127,1999,1475,4194,1440,2178],"class_list":["post-344057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-ahead","tag-day","tag-exit","tag-process","tag-start","tag-thunder"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344057"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344060,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344057\/revisions\/344060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}