While Victor Wembanyama presents a unique challenge, context regarding roster health and league-wide consistency proves the Thunder star’s ceiling remains far higher than his critics suggest.
With the return of Ben Simmons to the forefront of NBA fans' minds, you don't have to go on social media long to see that many posts hyping up Oklahoma City Thunder star Chet Holmgren before the season are met with detractors comparing Holmgren’s inability to play against the San Antonio Spurs to Ben Simmons drastic fall from grace. This is an unfair comparison and one that can quickly be put to bed.
Even a staunch defender of Holmgren must acknowledge that his performances against the Spurs devastated the Thunder's chances of going back-to-back. In no way should any logical watcher of OKC disagree with that; however, that is not a reason to throw Holmgren out the window and assume that, much like Simmons, Holmgren will be out of the league in a few years. There are two main reasons why this comparison is hyperbolic at best and downright foolish at worst.
First, Holmgren doesn’t struggle against any other individual player or team as he does with Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs. Now, initially that doesn’t relieve anyone’s concerns because San Antonio very much feels like the only team that reasonably has a shot of keeping OKC out of the finals.
However, we can still easily acknowledge it's a great sign that Holmgren doesn’t have these types of inconsistent, bad performances against anyone else. He struggled badly throughout the regular season in the matchups against the Spurs, but that never stopped him from having significant impacts in follow-up games against other NBA teams.
That in and of itself should help OKC fans realize that logically the comparison to Simmons just isn’t one you can make, as the Spurs did not “break” Holmgren and ruin his ability to aggressively impose his game on all other 28 teams in the league.
The Second reason is that while Holmgren played horribly against the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals, that maybe shouldn’t have been as big of a surprise as it was to many of us. There are many out there still waiting for Holmgren to take a leap as more of an on-ball, offensive threat.
While he has some of that in his bag, it's clear at this point in his career that Holmgren is much more of a play finisher than creator. Well, OKC has its second and third best playmakers out against the Spurs, making it much harder for him to get the easy finishes he often gets throughout the year due to elite creation by OKC’s healthy backcourt. Now, would the inclusion of Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell have removed all complaints about Holmgren from the WCF’s? Absolutely not.
Holmgren got punked by Victor Wembanyama, but the two things I just mentioned should easily throw out this idea that the Spurs broke Holmgren. He could always struggle with the Spurs, but there are many reasons OKC fans can look themselves in the mirror and say that Holmgren should and can be better heading into next season even against the Spurs.
