25-under-25: Chet Holmgren has nearly perfected the modern big man

The Oklahoma City Thunder's entire rebuild was in service of finding Chet Holmgren. He was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — the light at the end of the tunnel. OKC does not make the leap it did last season without Holmgren's immediate rise to stardom. Lest we forget, there was a moment in time when Victor Wembanyama was not the shoo-in Rookie of the Year. Only Chet could've made that a conversation.

It took a while to get around to Chet's brilliance, as he missed his entire first season with a foot injury. But around we got, and it couldn't have gone much better for OKC. The Thunder weren't able to advance past the second round of the playoffs, but that alone is an accomplishment for such a young group. From the surface, no team in the NBA has a longer title window than OKC.

Between Holmgren and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, OKC has one of the league's best duos baked in for the next decade, assuming all goes to plan. If Jalen Williams can make his top-20 leap — and folks, he's knocking — then it becomes harder to fathom anybody but OKC running the West for the foreseeable future.

Credit where it's due, Sam Presti executed the perfect rebuild. It was an exercise in patience, with Holmgren serving as the lesson we should all take away. Bottoming out has its perks. Sometimes a generational prospect comes around, and he doesn't even get picked in the No. 1 slot.

Subscribe to The Whiteboard, FanSided’s daily email newsletter on everything basketball. If you like The Whiteboard, share it with a friend! If you don’t like The Whiteboard, share it with an enemy.

Chet Holmgren is the perfect modern big and he's the centerpiece of OKC's future

I am not sure the collective "we" fully appreciate Holmgren's ceiling. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a top-five player in the league right now, a bonafide MVP candidate, and still, Holmgren might be OKC's most important long-term piece. At worse, Holmgren is going to swiftly arrive as the NBA's best No. 2 — a true Swiss Army Knife with a 7-foot-6 wingspan and preternatural instincts.

Holmgren checks just about every box we think of when evaluating "modern" bigs. Length, mobility, feel, skill. He's the whole package.

Critics will point to Holmgren's lack of strength and physicality, which showed up most glaringly in OKC's second-round loss to Dallas. It's a fair point, but as Holmgren gradually adds muscle over time, he should improve as a rebounder. In the meantime, the Thunder inked Isaiah Hartenstein to a three-year contract. Holmgren is versatile enough to slide comfortably between the four or five spot — a legitimate volume shooter with tight face-up handles, passing chops, and the dexterous footwork necessary to handle pressure on the ball.

Holmgren effortlessly attacks seams in the defense off the catch, flowing into OKC's drive-and-kick offense as well as the guards and wings on the floor with him. Sure, Holmgren won't set bone-bruising screens, but he's a prolific lob threat whose catch radius exceeds all but a select few NBA bigs.

We've already seen Holmgren running four-five pick-and-rolls with Hartenstein in preseason. That level of offensive versatility as a true 7-footer, with Holmgren's length and dexterity, is almost unheard of. He almost got unlucky with his "rookie" season bumping up against Wemby's, otherwise, we might have more of an appreciation for what makes Holmgren such a special talent.

He hit 37.0 percent of his 3s as a rookie, averaged 2.3 blocks in 29.4 minutes, and scored 16.5 points on 63.2 percent true shooting. In his first season. The scoring numbers will naturally balloon as Holmgren sharpens his approach and takes on a larger chunk of OKC's offense. The Thunder are officially in talent acquisition mode after years of financial restraint and stubborn patience, but Holmgren's role will only expand from here.

The value if a legitimate dribble-pass-shoot big in today's NBA is immense. And we haven't even fully touched on Holmgren's defense, which is special. The fact that Holmgren wasn't among the 13 players to receive Defensive Player of the Year votes last season is beyond egregious. There aren't five more impactful defenders in the NBA. Holmgren's range, fiery disposition, and well-honed instincts are a difficult combination to match. He can slide his feet on the perimeter, recover at record speeds due to that 7-foot-6 wingspan, or anchor the paint as a traditional drop coverage rim protector.

Next to Hartenstein this season, OKC will unleash Holmgren as a weak-side roamer. He's going to impact so many passing lanes, cut off so many drives, that it will become impossible to keep him out of the DPOY conversation. Sure, yeah, Wemby is the favorite, but Holmgren packs an awfully similar punch, often with more polish.

It's easy to forget that Holmgren is 22 years old, and entering his second NBA season. There is so much room for him to grow. He could plateau at last season's level and have a great career, but Holmgren is at the very beginning of his NBA journey. He has earned a bit of imagination when trying to fathom what the future holds. There are only so many players on this planet who can do all the things Holmgren can do.

Give that man his fowers, but know that Holmgren will be rising even further up this ranking in the years to come.

Chet Holmgren ranked No. 4 on FanSided's 2024-25 25-under-25, ranking the best young players in the NBA. Check out the rest of the list here.