OKLAHOMA CITY — The talk on the team plane centered on a player the Oklahoma City Thunder had not seen in weeks. All-Star point guard Jamal Murray had gone haywire that late-March evening, dropping a career-best 53 points in Denver while OKC was playing in Boston.
Late at night, with the defending champs heading home from Massachusetts and already in the stratosphere, word of Murray’s heroics spread. It didn’t take long for nearly everyone on the team to join the discussion. Fifty-three points. Nine 3-point makes. Murray was on fire.
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Basketball players are fans of the game they play, too, and they were glowing over a performance most of them had never matched.
Then Chet Holmgren entered the conversation.
The Thunder center had not been sleeping. He wasn’t stationed in a back seat away from the action. He wasn’t hanging with the coaching staff, who sit in a different section, sequestered from his teammates’ social activity. Yet, he stood up to blurt out a major announcement, one he was certain no one on the plane had yet realized.
“Oh!” he yelled. “Jamal Murray had 53! Y’all see that?!”
Without hesitation, the Thunder players merged, all cackling simultaneously. Holmgren realized what had happened. It was not his first time zoning out only to enter a conversation without realizing it had already begun. Within seconds, he was giggling just as hard as everyone else.
“It’s funny, because it’s Chet,” said Kenrich Williams, one of Holmgren’s closest friends on the Thunder. “That’s Chet. He’s in his own world, man.”
That’s Chet, all right.
He’s the comedic relief inside an unusually tight locker room that was built organically, either through the draft or with players who were shunned by other organizations and came to Oklahoma City when they were young, only for the franchise to develop them into helpful contributors. He’s the anchor of the NBA’s most smothering defense, the deserving second-place finisher in Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2026. He’s the highly intellectual individual who juxtaposes long diatribes about basketball philosophy, ones where he can identify other teams’ play calls as quickly as Shakespeare could notice iambic pentameter, with aloof gaffes on team planes.
He’s been a supplementary option inside OKC’s playoff offense, behind reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the hierarchy, after All-NBA wing Jalen Williams missed the majority of the regular season and much of the playoffs with injuries.
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But after Tuesday night’s win, in which Holmgren posted 16 points and 11 rebounds, the defending champion Thunder moved within one victory of a second straight NBA Finals appearance, taking a 3-2 lead over the San Antonio Spurs.
Holmgren’s world, the one Kenrich Williams portrays as well as the one reality relays, seems mostly jolly. And Holmgren will back up the sentiment.
But the center’s time in Oklahoma City did not have to be so pleasant. Before Holmgren could spring to success, he had to accept being a secondary performer, an uneasy task for any young player who had existed as, for lack of a better term, “the man” — a role he had to learn from the beginning, but one he could never hold in OKC.
With 2025 training camp set to begin, Holmgren’s mind had deviated from the NBA. Fresh off his first title, and perhaps with more to come, he showed up at a pickup game hosted by popular YouTube streamer Kai Cenat. The goal wasn’t to play; it was to help a friend.
Holmgren knew Cenat’s online following, and he also knew Gilgeous-Alexander had career goals that went beyond racking up trophies: a mission of selling sneakers. And Holmgren was determined to help.
With the cameras on him, Holmgren gifted Cenat a pair of Gilgeous-Alexander’s Converses, then FaceTimed his starting point guard into the conversation.
It was all part of Holmgren’s plan.
Contrary to popular belief, Holmgren rejects the cliché that the greatest teams push egos aside, forgetting individual goals in the quest for a Larry O’Brien Trophy. To him, sacrifice means having the greatest of both worlds.
“The best team is the team that has an awareness of each person’s individual goals and helps them get there as a team,” he said earlier this year in a conversation with The Athletic. “Shai is trying to sell shoes; I went on a stream with his shoes. Maybe somebody’s trying to find their rhythm. They’re not really shooting the ball too well. It’s like, let me pass up this (shot), get them a good one. Stuff like that.
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“Like last year, (Jalen Williams) was really pushing for All-Star, and all of us were like, go get that s—. Like, go vote for him.”
Holmgren’s mentality comes from experience, though not many professional players — if any at all — can relate to his situation.
ESPN ranked him as the country’s No. 1 recruit when he left high school for Gonzaga in 2021. He did not disappoint in college, eventually becoming the second selection in the 2022 NBA Draft. After a Lisfranc injury sidelined him for his first season, he has lived up to his potential as a pro. If the once-in-a-lifetime Victor Wembanyama did not exist, Holmgren would have won Rookie of the Year. The next spring, Holmgren won his first ring. The following season, this one, he made his first All-Star team and was named an All-NBA third-team selection.
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After a lifetime as “the man,” Holmgren has met expectations that were higher than Oklahoma City’s Devon Tower. And yet, because of the place that drafted him — the one with a loaded roster, with various players who could claim to be “the man” themselves, with one guy, Gilgeous-Alexander, who actually holds the title after earning his second consecutive MVP award — Holmgren was forced into an early-career realization that must be difficult for young guys who get gassed up their whole childhoods.
He was exactly as great as his advocates hoped he’d be, and yet, he had to accept a role.
A role where he couldn’t chuck up 20 shots a game. One where the offense would never be his. One where, on some nights, the ball might not find him. One that diverged from glory and buried itself in dirty work.
The Thunder provided an exceptional situation.
Teams that own top-five picks are normally not ready to win. And thus, they hand responsibilities to the young guys who represent the future. Some players become overwhelmed. Others break out. Either way, they receive their chances, ones Holmgren never had.
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He injured his foot before his rookie season in 2022-23 and did not play. By the time he returned, the Thunder were ready to take off.
“We’ve had a six-year build,” Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said. “There was pre-Chet and post-Chet. … We were a rocket ship once he started playing.”
Oklahoma City hasn’t finished lower than first in the Western Conference in any season since Holmgren returned. The roster overflows with talent, maybe enough to place it on the precipice of a dynasty. And so, Holmgren is stuck in a rare situation, one where he has lived up to expectations on both sides of the ball but must operate as a superstar role player for the good of the squad.
“You ever seen the angel and the devil on your shoulder? That visual?” Daigneault asked. “Neither is the angel or the devil, but I do think a lot of players, you’ve got your individual stuff on one shoulder and you got the team on the other.”
By age 24, Holmgren has figured out the balance. He would not average 20 points a game, despite hyperefficient scoring numbers that in another world could convince him to chuck up too many ill-advised looks. He would not handle the basketball aplenty, even though he’s far more skilled than his potentially oafy — but actually quite fluid — 7-foot-1 stick figure might suggest.
Instead, he would play within the Thunder’s team concepts.
“Ego has been the downfall of many people’s careers,” Holmgren said. “I feel like ego gets in the way of maximizing the moment and also understanding. Basically, what you’re asking me is, would I trade what we just accomplished last year and the opportunity that we have (this year) and the group that we have? Would I sacrifice that to go be able to shoot 20 shots a game?
“I don’t think so.”
Before he ever stepped foot in the NBA, Holmgren was a defense-first prospect, a shot-swatter who could also drain 3-pointers on the other end, a rare combination. At Gonzaga, he’d put the ball on the ground and drive to the hoop.
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But even then, as just a 19-year-old freshman, he was not the team’s leading scorer, an honor that belonged to junior forward Drew Timme.
Holmgren understands what it’s like to take a back seat.
“I feel like I’ve had a very fast maturing with my ego,” he said. “Usually, it takes people till they’re done playing, and they realize that the game keeps going, and nobody’s bigger than the game. People think the game’s gonna stop when they retire. It’s like … no.”
The Thunder identified the mentality, one reason they locked in on Holmgren at the 2022 draft. The team’s general manager, Sam Presti, is like “a method actor,” Daigneault said. Presti doesn’t just study on-court habits; he also imagines the player in Oklahoma, inside the Thunder’s system and culture.
“It’s very artistic,” Daigneault said.
The OKC head coach remembers the first time he heard about a young player the team drafted in the 2023 first round: Cason Wallace, a frisky guard capable of handling the ball and scoring more than he’s shown but, like Holmgren, has taken a back seat over his first three NBA seasons. To that point, Daigneault had never seen Wallace play. Too busy obsessing over next-day opponents, he would not have even recognized the teenager’s face.
So, Presti described Wallace without mentioning anything to do with basketball. The exchange reminded Daigneault of a conversation the two had about energetic big man Jaylin Williams the year prior. “That guy right there has a different level of intangibles,” Presti told Daigneault at Williams’ pre-draft workout.
Williams had a certain je ne sais quoi that fit what the Thunder hoped to build: a team with high-IQ, low-maintenance personalities, ones capable of sacrificing individual success and choosing to scrap in an inglorious, defense-first culture.
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When Wallace entered the Thunder’s facility, before Oklahoma City even selected him with the No. 10 pick, Presti made the same claim to Daigneault.
“Elite intangibles,” he said to his coach.
A year earlier, Holmgren was the one stamped with that vaunted label.
“I’ve coached (Williams) now for four years, and you know what he has? Elite intangibles,” Daigneault said. “Cason Wallace? Nailed it. Holmgren, he had that one pegged.”
As much as the Thunder have zeroed in on an on-court style — playing defense is a requirement in Oklahoma City, as is thriving inside an offense overridden with quick decision-making, screening and cutting — the team has bound itself to a personality profile.
Team over ego. Team over All-NBA. Team over scoring titles. Team over MVPs. Team over All-Star appearances.
No matter what the devil on the shoulder argues.
“The ego in me is like, I can accomplish those things,” Holmgren said. “But at the end of the day, I can’t let my ego get in the way and try to rush it to the point where it’s detrimental to where we are now. … I feel like it’s very shortsighted to chase the wrong things, and then you end up miserable, because it’s like, ‘Well, f—, now everything else that was going great is all f—-d up because I chased this.’
“The other thing that’s f—-d up, too, is some teams that aren’t as good, some guys get to the point where they’re like, ‘We’re not winning. OK, I’m gonna just make sure I get my averages.’ So, it’s like, I get my averages, but it’s not helping us win. But I got my averages, so now the blame goes on everybody else. That’s one f—-d up message.”
It’s a message from which Holmgren hopes to steer clear. Players want shots because they are sexy, or maybe because they signal status. Or maybe because it’s how they’ve always played. Or maybe because of the most obvious and relatable goal any professional in any industry could develop: Scoring in bunches could inflate the direct deposit that wires every two weeks.
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But Holmgren has found a hack to the system: Forget about the numbers and win so much that the team has no choice but to pay to keep the band together.
“If the team is winning, everybody’s gonna make more money,” Holmgren said. “If it’s a contract year for you, and your team s–ts the f—–g bed, even if you’re putting up good stats, you will make less money than if the team f—–g cooks. At the end of the day, winning is respected in the NBA, and winning in the NBA is rewarded.”
The Thunder were mired in a rebuild when they drafted Holmgren. During his first professional season, they climbed to 40 wins but lost in the Play-In Tournament. The following year, a healthy Holmgren helped the Thunder to 57 victories and the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. They eventually fell to the Dallas Mavericks in the second round of the playoffs. The next season, 2024-25, they won their first title since moving to Oklahoma in 2008.
This past summer, Holmgren and Jalen Williams became eligible for extensions. Both received max contracts.
Because Holmgren is irreplaceable. As is Jalen Williams, the Thunder’s secondary creator. As is Jaylin Williams, the elite carrier of intangibles. As is Gilgeous-Alexander, who is, at worst, the NBA’s second-best player. As is Kenrich Williams, a career role player who once declared he prefers to finish his career in Oklahoma City because of the culture the guys have cultivated.
As are the out-of-nowhere developmental pieces, such as Ajay Mitchell, Aaron Wiggins or Isaiah Joe. As is the newest addition, Jared McCain. As is the pack of defensive hounds OKC releases on anyone it plays, a gang that includes Wallace, Alex Caruso, Luguentz Dort and Isaiah Hartenstein.
“I’m not sitting here saying, oh, because I have this mindset, we’re winning,” Holmgren said. “It’s because all of us have this mindset.”