Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren are billed as one of the NBA's best rivalries, and there's a new wrinkle in the feud between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder.
The San Antonio Spurs are 3-1 this season against the best-in-the-NBA Oklahoma City Thunder, and will take on their Western Conference rivals for the final time this regular season on Wednesday night.
The Spurs and Thunder have been billed as the top rivalry this season, with Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren taking center stage. The two towering floor-spacers and shot-blockers both offer a rarely-seen skillset, although even the most diehard Thunder fan should admit that Wembanyama is the better player of the two.
Of course, the Thunder--despite their losing record against San Antonio--are the better team by every metric this season. However, Wembanyama seems to take any match-up with Holmgren personally, and there's a new, complicated detail.
Wembanyama and Holmgren's Rivalry Gets Political
After ICE agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, plenty of NBA players were quick to speak out against the violence inflicted by the government. Wemabnyama was no exception.
"Every day I wake up and see the news, and I'm horrified," he told reporters. "I think it's crazy that some people might make it seem like or make it sound like it's acceptable. Like the murder of civilians is acceptable? Every day, I read the news, and sometimes I ask very deep questions about my own life."
Holmgren grew up in the Twin Cities and was asked a similar question, although he ducked giving a well-thought-out response, instead opting to play both sides.
"I don't want to get into the opinions and politics of everything, but I definitely just want to send wishes to everybody up there that's been affected," said the Thunder's star. "I don't have a full picture of everything going on. So, like, I can't really speak on details and what happened and what transpired."
Wembanyama went out of his way to call the killing "unacceptable." Holmgren tried to play both sides. There's a joke running around that Holmgren isn't very smart.
As he said in 2024: "Too many words on the page kind of hurts my brain, so it's always good when there's a lot of pictures."
Wembanyama, meanwhile, makes it a point to read before every game. While expecting something eloquent from Holmgren might be unfair, it's safe to say that reading the room and rising to the occasion when it matters most is just another area where Wembanyama dominates.