Shai Gilgeous-Alexander did all he could on Saturday night, but in the end it was too much to overcome that three of OKC’s core guys didn’t play in Game 7. Jalen Williams was out with a hamstring. Ajay Mitchell had a strained calf. And Chet Holmgren caught a case of the Ben Simmons bug.
Yeah, Holmgren was technically on the floor for 33 minutes. He did about as much in that time as Williams and Mitchell did from the bench in street clothes, scoring four points on two shot attempts as the Thunder failed in their mission to become the first repeat NBA champion since the 2018 Warriors.
It’s the Spurs who are marching on to the Finals to face the Knicks after a 111-103 victory in one of the most poised performances you will ever see from a team in a Game 7. It came on the road, against the defending champions, with three players age 22 or younger leading the charge.
Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper were awesome in Game 6 to keep San Antonio’s season alive, and they were awesome again in Game 7 with a combined 48 points, 20 boards and 11 assists. Even those numbers don’t do justice to the absolutely enormous plays each of them made at the most critical points of this game. Huge bucket after huge bucket. Harper and Castle combined for seven offensive rebounds.
This is what it looks like to step up in a big-time moment. Not a single player on the Spurs backed away from the heat of this game for even a single second. Holmgren, on the other hand, looked terrified. You don’t usually want to make that sort of judgment on a guy from afar, but this was too obvious to ignore. The guy wanted nothing to do with Wembanyama. Nothing to do with any pass that came his way. Nothing to do with the moment.
I cannot stress the two shot attempts enough. This was not a case of Holmgren trying to make plays and just running into Wembanyama at every turn, or driving and kicking, or doing anything productive with the ball. He couldn’t get rid of the thing quickly enough.
This is what it looks like to catch a pass, take a look at the guy in front of you, and simply say “no thanks” and hot-potato it right back where it came from, only to basically be forced to try something when it comes back to you and not even being able to stay on your feet.
Meanwhile, this is what Wemby was busy doing to Holmgren.
Let’s also be clear: Wemby wasn’t even Holmgren’s primary defender in this series. The Spurs put wings on him like Devin Vassell and Julian Champagnie as Wemby roamed as a paint protector (he basically met Chet at every turn as a help defender), and yet he still couldn’t find a way to exploit the size mismatches as a seven-footer in his own right.
To even say Holmgren was passive on Saturday night would be giving him too much credit. He was basically invisible. Of the four shots he took, zero came in the second half. Zero! That is inexcusable for a guy who will start a five-year, $239 million contract next season. A guy who was voted Third Team All-NBA this season.
It’s exponentially worse that Holmgren pulled this disappearing act in a game in which the Thunder were, as mentioned, already without Williams and Mitchell. In a game like this, you need more than one guy who can create his own offense, and with those two guys out, SGA needed Holmgren more than ever. It makes you consider this answer from SGA after OKC’s Game 4 loss in which Holmgren tallied just three buckets.
That is what you call saying everything without saying anything. So let’s just say it for SGA: Holmgren needed to get himself going. It’s cool that OKC coach Mark Daigneault did the honorable thing and tried to take the blame for Holmgren’s no-show in Game 7, but nobody’s buying that line. It bears repeating, this is a max-contract and All-NBA player. Holmgren averaged 10.7 PPG in this series, down from 17 in the regular season. He was held to single digits twice. If he wasn’t going to do anything offensively, he couldn’t even manage to pull more than four rebounds in Game 7?
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Sam Quinn
Wembanyama is going to outplay pretty much every opponent on most nights, but OKC needed Holmgren to at least pull his weight in this series. The fact that the Thunder made it to Game 7 despite the Mitchell and Williams injuries and Holmgren laying multiple eggs is a credit to their depth, defense, toughness and the ability of SGA to create offense when he’s not shooting efficiently himself.
Alex Caruso gave SGA all the help he could muster. Jared McCain went out firing. Cason Wallace was a stud. Lu Dort, who was terrible all series, is going to get a pass because more is expected of Holmgren, and it should be. If Holmgren has an even halfway decent game on Saturday night the Thunder are probably going to the Finals.
Holmgren is not going to become the next Ben Simmons. He was sensational all season and great through the first two rounds of the playoffs. Wemby just scares him to death. It wasn’t just this game or this series, either. In four regular-season matchups, he averaged just 10.7 PPG on 38% shooting against the Spurs.
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Holmgren takes this matchup personally. Everyone knows that. Wemby treats him like a little brother. He came into this series wanting to prove himself against Wembanyama. But once he lost confidence, which was almost immediately, he was done in this series.
It will be a problem moving forward, because no matter how good Holmgren is against everyone else, Oklahoma City probably isn’t going back to another Finals without going through Wemby, in at least some capacity, for the next decade plus.
That said, the Simmons comp is striking. We all remember the meltdown Game 7 against the Hawks in 2021 in which Simmons was palpably terrified of even having the ball in his hands for fear of being fouled and having to shoot free throws. He ultimately passed up a wide-open dunk attempt for the defining lowlight of his career. In that game, Simmons took four shots. Holmgren taking two in this one felt eerily similar.
It wasn’t the only reason the Thunder lost, but it was the biggest one. No question about it. Before the series started, I wondered whether Holmgren was up for this battle when I wrote the following:
Holmgren struggled mightily against Wembanyama and the Spurs this season. It was a big reason why San Antonio took four of the five matchups, which I don’t put too much weight on, but it can’t be discounted entering this series. The Spurs know they can beat the Thunder. That’s half the battle.
OKC’s equation changes quite a bit if Holmgren emerges as a legit No. 2 scorer to take some weight off of Mitchell and Williams having to do that. He’s averaging 18.6 PPG on 60/39/88 shooting splits so far, but it’s not the Lakers, against whom he averaged 20 PPG with a big 24-and-12 showing in the clincher, or the Suns on the other side. It’s Wembanyama. Whole different ballgame.
Holmgren takes this Wemby matchup personal. Everyone knows that. He tried to do too much in their regular-season matchups, hunting his own buckets outside the offense. It’s a fine line, because has to be aggressive. OKC probably can’t win if he isn’t. Especially if Williams’ hamstring issues pop back up. If Holmgren gets badly outplayed by Wemby, OKC will have a pretty steep hill to climb.
Indeed, Holmgren was badly outplayed by Wembanyama. And in the end, the hill was too steep to climb.
