Chet Holmgren put up 11 points, four rebounds and three assists in his long-awaited NBA debut for the Thunder.
One team held a hastily arranged players-only meeting after the Oklahoma City Thunder’s 124-104 victory over the Chicago Bulls at United Center on Wednesday. You get one guess as to which it was, along with five takeaways from the matchup.
1. Can you spell SGA with M-V-P?
Pardon the alphabet soup, but if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander can continue Wednesday’s production, he’ll emerge as a top candidate for the Kia Most Valuable Player award come springtime. Gilgeous-Alexander, sporting the one-legging look, forced nothing, looked for teammates first and wound up scoring 31 points on 12-of-18 shooting, with five rebounds and 10 assists. He also had a steal, two blocks and just one turnover.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander drops a game-high 31 points on Bulls in rout
Last season the 6-foot-6 guard became an All-Star and finished fourth among NBA scoring leaders with 31.4 ppg. He did bravura work for Team Canada in the FIBA World Cup this summer. Now he looks poised to chase a scoring title and, if OKC wins enough, push his way into the MVP chatter.
2. No more ‘wait’ problem for Holmgren
There’s no mania surrounding his every move or mood the way there is for San Antonio rookie center Victor Wembanyama. Had it been up to Holmgren, he would have gotten this toe-in-the-water stuff out of the way a year ago. But the Lisfranc injury that canceled what should have been his 2022-23 season finally is healed, pushing his first NBA game to Wednesday night.
The verdict: Solid and efficient, with 11 points, four rebounds, three assists and one steal in 25 minutes. Holmgren got on the board with a shot from the right baseline. He attacked the rim for an and-1. He hit a pair of 3-pointers. He shot 4-for-7 overall, had a steal and stayed out of foul trouble.
That last part mattered, because the Bulls were determined to test the lanky youngster physically. Both Nikola Vucevic and Andre Drummond went hard at Holmgren, Drummond almost wearing the 7-foot, 195-pound Thunder rookie like a backpack when the veteran got low and posted up.
He survived just fine, though, game for whatever the opponents or his coaches throw at him.
In his Thunder debut, Chet Holmgren uses a clean half-pivot fake to clear space for the fadeaway and swishes his first NBA basket.
3. When continuity isn’t a good thing
The sameness about the Bulls from last season to this one wasn’t so much eerie as sad. It was by default more than by design, with no big offseason maneuvers presenting themselves or pursued. Only tweaking (Jevon Carter, Torrey Craig) around the edges.
So the band is back, even if no one was holding up a lighter or a cell phone flashlight for the encore.
What the sellout crowd of 21,369 saw was the same movie as last year: Game No. 85 of that unsatisfying AT&T Play-In Tournament season rather than Game 1 of something new.
DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Vucevic weren’t enough. Again. Patrick Williams, a No. 4 pick three years ago, looked as inconsistent and inconsequential as ever. LaVine and starting point guard Coby White missed 22 of their 30 shots. And when the deficit hit 20 with 5:36 left, the booing started — and would have been louder if so many fans weren’t already in the parking lots.
Let’s face it, a players-only meeting on Opening Night raises the bar awfully high for the 81 to follow.
“There wasn’t anything crazy, no fighting, none of that,” Vucevic told reporters. “It was really constructive … and it was needed.”
4. Two teams, different directions
The Thunder, by contrast, stand to be one of the NBA’s most exciting teams, featuring depth, youth, a stash of future draft picks to use or deal, and time on their side. Coach Mark Daigneault has sold the defense-first team concept well and Holmgren’s delayed involvement just gives them more options in size and style.
You can nitpick their roster and bemoan the absence of any “old heads,” those wizened veterans brought in to mentor young teammates. But the core of Gigleous-Alexander, Holmgren, Josh Giddey, Jalen Williams and Luguentz Dort is growing up together, convinced they can chase down a postseason berth in the rugged West.
“The one thing is, I have unending confidence in this group’s ability to learn from their experiences,” Daigneault said. “I know we’re going to be better a month from now than we are today. I don’t know if the outcomes will reflect that but our team will be better.”
5. Take this for data!
Daigneault shared some perspective that applied not just to the Thunder and the Bulls but to all 30 teams as they sweated out their openers and fought any temptations to overreact.
“The excitement of the first game can get everybody swept up, but regardless of what happens, we have 98.8% of our season left,” he said. “And so does Chicago. Which is a good chunk.
“We’ll evaluate like we do any other game, and we’ll learn from it and start the process of growing, regardless of what happens.”
Maybe that’s what the Bulls talked about.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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