OKLAHOMA CITY — There’s a stat sheet within Chet Holmgren’s long reach. His Oklahoma City Thunder just beat the Chicago Bulls for the 62nd of their 68 regular-season wins. But he doesn’t want to see the box score. He grabs it so he can crumple it up.
It has nothing to do with the numbers on it. Holmgren is emphasizing a point. The rising young center with superstar aspirations spent his entire summer sharpening his skill set in belief he was ready for a third-season explosion.
Initial signals were promising. Holmgren put up 25 points, 14 rebounds, five assists, four blocks and two steals in an opening night blowout win in Denver. He outplayed Nikola Jokić. Two weeks later, he capped off a nine-game surge with 29 points in a blowout win over the Houston Rockets. The Thunder were 8-1.
In the 10th game, Golden State Warriors wing Andrew Wiggins drove baseline in the first quarter, nailed Holmgren on his leap to the rim at the right angle and sent the thin Thunder center on a perpendicular fall to the floor at a dangerous angle. Holmgren fractured his hip.
“I worked my tail off last summer,” he tells The Athletic. “I don’t think I really did anything other than just work out and then chill until I could work out again. I came out firing. And then — boom! — get hurt. F—ed up situation.”
That’s when he crumples up the stat sheet and lobs it toward the corner of the Thunder’s meeting room.
“All that work last summer,” Holmgren says with a sigh. “Thrown into the trash can.”
The win total and historic point differential tell the tale of a Thunder dream season. They employ the likely Most Valuable Player, cleared their conference by 16 games and have home court through the NBA Finals if they advance that far. But they’ve had adversity peppered throughout, mostly in regard to their center spot.
This past summer, while Holmgren worked on his body and game, the Thunder used a valuable chunk of cap space to sign a second center in what they felt could be a successful twin-tower approach. On the first day of free agency, general manager Sam Presti and head coach Mark Daigneault flew to Oregon to pitch Isaiah Hartenstein on a three-year, $87 million contract.
“It’s not like I was in a nice little Los Angeles setup,” Hartenstein told The Athletic. “We were in some random hotel in Eugene. Can’t remember the name.”
In their second-round loss to the Dallas Mavericks last May, the Thunder’s rebounding flaws and lack of interior depth hurt in a series decided by the slimmest of margins. Dallas beat them up on the glass. So the Thunder targeted and signed Hartenstein because they felt he was the type of player and personality who could shore-up the weakness while fitting in with their strengths.
But Hartenstein broke his left hand in the preseason and didn’t return until after Holmgren fractured his hip. By the time he re-entered the lineup, Holmgren was stuck in bed, stir-crazy from an injury that tested his mental resilience.
“Man, you don’t…” Holmgren pauses. “I feel like I had a decent idea of my gratitude for just being able to live a regular life. Because when I had my foot surgery (as a rookie), I was on a scooter. I couldn’t walk, obviously. It made life more difficult. But I was still pretty mobile.”
Holmgren then repositions himself in his seat, contorting his 7-foot-1 frame to lie uncomfortably on his side in a stretched-out position.
“Bedridden,” Holmgren said. “When you have a fractured hip, you are laying in this position for four weeks in bed. Then another two weeks on crutches. So I couldn’t f—ing move, I couldn’t do anything. Teams are practicing, still working on their rhythm, getting things going, getting in shape. And I was in bed. Sitting like this. I couldn’t move. It was f—ed up. But, again, you’re given situations and circumstances. Some are more f—ed up than others. Some are in your control. Some aren’t. It’s all about what you do with them.”
Without Holmgren and Hartenstein, the Thunder found a bunch of small-ball lineups that worked. They ripped off a ton of wins. They integrated Hartenstein into the mix and he found a rhythm with his new teammates. They ripped off more wins. Holmgren spent the middle portion of his rehab process working on a quicker catch-and-shoot trigger and believes his 3-point shot is in a better place. Progress was made.
But the Thunder signed Hartenstein to play next to Holmgren and raise their playoff ceiling. Through 49 games, they had logged zero minutes together. So when Holmgren was finally cleared in the season’s 50th game, Daigneault started the two centers together. They needed to speed up the familiarity process.
“You have 48 minutes at the five,” Daigneault said. “And if you take those two guys, they should account for more than 48 minutes between them. And so it puts you in a position where it’s like, do you want to get your best players on the court or not? The answer to us is yes, we’d like to get our best players on the court. Sometimes you have to adapt tactically or lineup-wise in order to do that.”
Holmgren and Hartenstein were both active on the same night 20 times this season. Daigneault got them on the floor 316 minutes together. It isn’t a gigantic sample — 39 other Thunder two-man combinations played more together — but it isn’t insignificant either. Daigneault said it’s enough to make him feel comfortable entering the playoffs.
“It would be more uncomfortable if it was like really stalling,” Daigneault said. “If it wasn’t getting off the ground or if it was low-impact or if it was clunky, then that’s a harder decision of (how much to use it). But it was good right away in unpredictable ways.”
The Holmgren and Hartenstein twin-tower combination outscored opponents by 96 points in their 316 minutes together. It had an offensive rating of 122.9 and a defensive rating of 109.4, both impressive.
(Benny Sieu / Imagn Images)
It is, unsurprisingly, the best rebounding combination (77.4 percent rebound rate) of any of their top-50 most used two-man groups. They’ve walled off the basket. Daigneault called Holmgren and Hartenstein “easily” two of the league’s top-10 rim protectors. But it’s the other side that has him encouraged.
“The offensive flow that we’ve been able to maintain with two seven-footers on the floor (is key),” Daigneault said. “It’s something that always concerns you when you go super big. But I think it speaks to how skilled those guys are. They’re both in their own way very dynamic.”
It wasn’t an immediate click. There have been awkward moments and empty stretches.
“The first three games I was like, ‘Uhhh, I don’t know how this might work,’” Hartenstein said. “We were trying to get out of each other’s way but through that we got in each other’s way, if that makes sense.”
Daigneault brought Hartenstein and Holmgren together after a home practice and they watched a bunch of film together to iron out the flaws.
“Mark is such a smart coach,” Hartenstein said. “Then we’re both really smart players. So we kind of talked through it. We started to be more aggressive.”
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams missed a couple games here and there, giving Hartenstein and Holmgren a bit more offensive freedom to explore in lineup combinations without their primary scorers.
“It switches on and off,” Hartenstein said. “Either I’m facilitating to him or he’s facilitating to me. And I think it’s been impressive how he’s coming off handoffs, not just looking to score, still making a good pass, read, or coming off a pick and roll at 7-foot-1. It doesn’t look like a 7-1 pick and roll. He moves like a guard.”
Hartenstein’s passing ability, screening genius and low-usage approach help it work.
“It’s not like I’m just standing in the way or asking for lobs,” he said.
But it’s Holmgren’s unique skill set that even allowed the Thunder to explore the Hartenstein idea. He wouldn’t have come if it was to just strictly be Holmgren’s backup. But Holmgren can shoot, pass, dribble and playmake to a rare degree for a 7-footer. Plus he has some experience in what he called a “hybrid” role, playing center on defense but some power forward on offense in college at Gonzaga with Drew Timme in the post.
“I’d still say what’s being asked of me is a lot different,” Holmgren said. “Because he’s kind of like the connection hub. Whoever’s at the five for us is kind of the connection hub and he’s out there screening, handoffs, playing in those short rolls. So I’m basically, I wouldn’t even call it the four. We have whoever’s handling the ball, we have the (center) connect things and then we just have wings basically. Spacers, cutters, wings.”
The Thunder enter the playoffs confident their double-big approach can work against any type of lineup “or any team,” Daigneault said. But for it to turn into one of the swing factors in the Western Conference, lifting the Thunder franchise to its first finals since 2012, there’s an internal feeling that it must turn from great to elite on the defensive end.
“Actually, 108 (defensive rating) is really good,” Daigneault said. “But I think it’s got more upside because they’re not used to being on the perimeter that much, specifically Chet.”
For Hartenstein, the job responsibility remains much of the same. He will typically guard the opposing center and be the one asked to protect the paint in a more traditional sense. Holmgren is the one thrown out of his defensive comfort zone. This is the first time he’s played in a lineup when he isn’t the primary rim protector.
“Honestly, the challenge when I’m playing more of a perimeter spot on defense isn’t even guarding the ball or guarding a primary person in action,” Holmgren said. “If I’m chasing over a screen, I’ve done pretty good there.”
Then he paused to think how much he should detail it.
“I can say this because it’s on tape,” Holmgren said. “My problem is as a shot blocker — and any shot blocker will tell you this — your first instinct is the ball.”
Daigneault, Holmgren and Hartenstein referenced a road game against the Sacramento Kings in late March. The Thunder won easily and only gave up 105 points to a productive offense, which is something Daigneault emphasized. But they put Hartenstein on Domantas Sabonis and had Holmgren guard Keegan Murray, a knockdown 3-point shooter.
Murray hit nine 3s. Most of them were when Holmgren wandered too far off of him, falling victim to his instinct to roam and prioritize paint protection over the perimeter. Here are two first-quarter examples where Holmgren (left side of both plays) sags too far off Murray while Sabonis is posting up against Hartenstein and then ventures too far into the mix when he should stay closer to Murray.
That’s a night that Holmgren views as a frustration point but a valuable regular-season learning lesson considering the type of offensive challenges that await in the playoffs.
“Keegan was hitting shots and a lot of those came on overhelps,” Holmgren said. “You take away those 3s that he hit and they score like 65 points… You can’t shut anybody out, but if we can make it extremely tough on all areas of the floor, what’s that look like? What can we be if we don’t give those looks?”
The Thunder believe that answer can be a championship. To obtain that goal, they plan to deploy Holmgren and Hartenstein together plenty in a twin-tower approach they didn’t have in their toolbox in their previous playoff run.
“The reason we’ve gone small in the past is to get our best guys on the court,” Daigneault said. “It’s the reason why we’ll go big now. We don’t want to be beholden to one way of playing. We want to figure out how to get to our highest impact players and those guys are obviously two of our highest-impact players.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: William Purnell and Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
