OKC Thunder Needs an Aggressive Chet Holmgren Every Night

The Thunder dropped another puzzling game on Sunday night, and granted, the team was missing quite a few key players. But just as Oklahoma City was coming out of a slump and putting together a solid winning streak, it feels like they’ve slipped back into another lull. The team has now lost three of its last five games — and all three came against Eastern Conference opponents. It felt like OKC had figured things out since the late December slide, but it’s hard to sugarcoat this stretch.

On Sunday night, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the only player to cross the 20-points threshold. Oklahoma City received secondary scoring from many different players, but nobody could do so efficiently. The Thunder shot just 11-of-43 from 3-points range, and many of those attempts were good looks. 

Oklahoma City is currently without Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell, which makes Chet Holmgren’s offensive output that much more important every night. He has taken a massive leap this season, but sometimes that leap needs to be followed with more volume. On Sunday, it just felt like he wasn’t aggressive enough. He didn’t play bad by any means, but Oklahoma City needs him to be ultra aggressive with the injuries up and down the lineup.

Holmgren had just 11 points in 29 minutes, and he shot the ball well too at 5-for-10 from the floor. He stacked his points with 10 rebounds to give him a double-double, but Oklahoma City needed a bit more. He was an uncharacteristic -9 on the floor.

The last stretch of games has been boom or bust from Holmgren. He followed up a 28-points masterclass in Cleveland with an inefficient 10-points outing in Milwaukee. He was 3-of-9 from the floor and 1-of-4 from 3-point range. Then, in Indiana, he poured in 25 points and 13 rebounds on 8-of-14 from the floor, looking entirely dominant. He followed it up, however, with the 11-point performance on Sunday.

When Holmgren takes 15+ shots, it always seems like a good thing for the Thunder. He’s not the type to force bad looks, and he’s open enough to get that amount of shots up. But when Oklahoma City’s roster is as barren as it is at the moment, this Thunder team simply needs him to hit that 15 shots mark. OKC is a better team with Holmgren taking a larger volume of attempts on the offensive end, and with the injuries there seems to be no other option.

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