Oklahoma City Thunder center Chet Holmgren was considered a top-two defender in the NBA. He only trailed San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama, the 2025-26 Defensive Player of the Year, for the most total votes by 10, 200-190.<\/p>\n
The pair of \u2018cream of the crop\u2019 shot blockers are going head-to-head in the Western Conference Finals as you read this. They have disliked each other since the 2021 FIBA U19 World Cup in Riga, Latvia, when USA\u2019s Holmgren won the gold medal over France\u2019s Wembanyama. Holmgren won the tournament\u2019s Most Valuable Player Award.<\/p>\n
The lanky challenger at the rim is coming off an NBA All-Star appearance for the first time in his career. He\u2019s on the chase for a second-straight NBA championship, becoming only the fourth Zag to win an NBA title last summer (Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>\u2019 Adam Morrison in 2009 and 2010, Miami Heat<\/a>\u2019s Ronny Turiaf<\/a> in 2012, and San Antonio Spurs\u2019 Austin Daye<\/a> in 2014).<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Through 69 starts for the Thunder, the 7-1 talent averaged 17.1 points on a shooting split of 55.7 percent from the field, 36.2 percent on three-pointers, and 79.2 percent at the charity stripe. His 8.9 rebounds per game rank tied for No. 11 in the NBA, while his 1.9 blocks per game are tied for No. 2. Most importantly, the world\u2019s up-and-coming basketball star listed a defensive rating of 104.1.<\/p>\n Arden Cravalho\u00a0is a Gonzaga University graduate from the Bay Area\u2026 Follow him on X @a_cravalho<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City Thunder center Chet Holmgren was considered a top-two defender in the NBA. He only trailed San…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[42521,49,48,5715,8231,8224,459,16155,39886,9585,3555,251779,2696,82,21217,121409],"class_list":["post-687773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-austin-daye","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chet-holmgren","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-miami-heat","tag-nba","tag-nba-championship","tag-ok","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-ronny-turiaf","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-sports","tag-victor-wembanyama","tag-western-conference-finals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687773","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=687773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}