NBA.com<\/a>\u2019s annual GM survey from John Schuhmann. 80% of GMs picked the Thunder to repeat as champions, 87% picked Oklahoma City as the top seed in the West and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander landed near the top of almost every question about star players.<\/p>\nFresh off his championship run that included a 40-point performance in the NBA Finals, Jalen Williams was even in the mix for the league\u2019s best small forward and most versatile player. However, not all of Oklahoma City\u2019s Big 3 earned votes, as Chet Holmgren didn\u2019t make a single appearance at any point.<\/p>\n
After spending a large chunk of last season sidelined, it could make some sense for him to be overlooked. However, after an incredible postseason run anchoring the Thunder\u2019s defense and capping it off with an NBA record five blocks in Game 7 of the Finals, Holmgren clearly has some doubters to prove wrong again next season.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s understandable for Holmgren not to be on the list for categories like best center and there are some other great candidates for questions about breakout players, Holmgren not being listed in any defensive capacity is a bit mind-boggling. After averaging 2.3 blocks per game throughout the first two years of his career and 1.9 blocks throughout the playoffs last season, Holmgren couldn\u2019t even get a passing mention for best interior defender or best defender.<\/p>\n
While it makes sense for Victor Wembanyama to dominate those categories, he was far from a unanimous selection. With Holmgren entering as second in most Defensive Player of the Year odds, it seems strange to see guys like Rudy Gobert, Evan Mobley and even Ivica Zubac get votes in those categories but not the Thunder\u2019s interior anchor.<\/p>\n
Maybe Holmgren\u2019s raw stats won\u2019t be as eye-catching as some of those picked above him next season, but when the playoffs come around, it\u2019s hard to imagine many defenders being as impactful as him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City has been praised all summer, but one of its stars is being overlooked going into next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-205646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}