Thunder reaffirm – A day after Oklahoma City’s Western Conference Finals elimination, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren each made the case that Holmgren remains central to the team’s next step—despite a tough Game 7.
Oklahoma City’s season ended the way it can only end in late-game silence: one day after their Western Conference Finals elimination, Chet Holmgren was still dealing with what he did and didn’t do in Game 7.
In that deciding matchup, Holmgren attempted two shots. He absorbed plenty of shots from critics afterward. His presence in the postseason spotlight was thin compared with the series narrative. with the Thunder ultimately falling to San Antonio. and the West finals turning into a direct showcase between Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama.
Yet the Thunder’s message inside their end-of-season meetings Sunday was straightforward—trust the process, trust the player, and move forward.
Mark Daigneault, speaking when the team gathered for end-of-season meetings, put Holmgren at the center of Oklahoma City’s identity. “Every minute Chet Holmgren’s been on the team, we’ve been the 1 seed in the Western Conference,” Daigneault said. “And it wasn’t the case before Chet was healthy.”
For Holmgren, the regular season finished with numbers that made it hard to ignore what he brought when healthy. He posted career highs of 17.1 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. He made All-NBA for the first time. All-Defensive for the first time. earned his first All-Star nod. and finished second in Defensive Player of the Year balloting.
That second-place finish came behind Wembanyama—an echo of the rookie year parallels that followed both players and both teams. Holmgren finished second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2024. and the Thunder’s road in these West finals ended in a matchup where Wembanyama’s edge in the series showed up in the numbers.
Still, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t try to soften the feeling of what comes next. The Thunder guard—back-to-back reigning NBA Most Valuable Player—said they need Holmgren. and that the team’s success is tied to his presence. “We need Chet. We need Chet Holmgren,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Before Chet was here, we weren’t who we are today. We didn’t have the success we had today. When he’s the best version of himself, we’re the best version of ourselves and it’s no secret.”.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s confidence mattered most coming right after a Game 7 performance that carried the Thunder when it counted. He scored 35 points in the deciding game against San Antonio, then turned the focus inward when asked how the season should be processed.
Holmgren. for his part. also defended the uniqueness of what Oklahoma City is building—framing the Thunder as something more specific than a standard matchup plan. “I definitely think that they’re different in terms of I don’t think there’s another team that has their play style. their personnel. ” Holmgren said. “They’re unique in that way. You can’t just kind of play like a base normal. ‘this is what we kind of do on an average Tuesday night’ type of thing.”.
The day after elimination, the conversation was already tilting away from blame and toward responsibility. If the outside world had treated Holmgren as one of the reasons Game 7 didn’t go Oklahoma City’s way, the Thunder’s leaders pushed back with a different story.
The clearest counterweight came from Gilgeous-Alexander. After scoring 35 points in Game 7, he described a second straight MVP season as a “failure.”
“I failed at my goal,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I didn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve. but through my experiences. I learned the most about myself and I make the greatest amount of increases I have in my career when I fail at my goal and don’t get what I want. And I look at this no different. I didn’t get where I wanted to go this season. There’s a reason for that. Now I have to look at that reason and try to make sure it never happens again.”.
What hung over the meeting wasn’t just the loss. It was the contrast: Holmgren’s two-shot Game 7 and the series where San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama had the superior numbers. set against a season where Holmgren delivered career-best production. earned All-NBA and All-Defensive recognition. received his first All-Star nod. and finished second in Defensive Player of the Year balloting.
The Thunder’s insistence Sunday was that those two truths don’t cancel each other out. They may conflict in how the postseason looked. But in Oklahoma City’s locker room. the belief is that Holmgren is the team’s foundation—and that the failure of reaching the next step demands changes that go beyond one player’s stat line.
Oklahoma City Thunder Chet Holmgren Mark Daigneault Shai Gilgeous-Alexander San Antonio Spurs Victor Wembanyama Western Conference Finals Game 7 All-NBA All-Defensive MVP