24-year-old Oklahoma City Thunder center Chet Holmgren’s growing injury history in his young NBA career is catching up to him. If you recollect, the Gonzaga Bulldog sat out his entire true rookie campaign in 2022-23 with a Lisfranc ligament tear in his right foot suffered during a Seattle CrawsOver Pro-Am game in August of 2022, while guarding then Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James on a fast break.
Now three games into his 2026-27 season, Holmgren is expected to be out 8-to-10 weeks after undergoing
a biological treatment to address a small patellar tendon tear.
The 7-1, now 215-pound slenderman put on two pounds during these past summer months. While that may not seem like much to the basic eye, that was a somewhat substantial growth for a player of his stature.
It’s extremely difficult for an athlete like Holmgren to put on any visible weight or muscle mass, a talking point that has been following the former five-star recruit since his high school/AAU days with Minnehaha Academy and Team Sizzle on the Under Armour circuit in the state of Minnesota. The same basketball programs that his fellow Zag brother, Orlando Magic guard Jalen Suggs, was a part of.
After getting drafted with the 2nd overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft by general manager Sam Presti, Holmgren has still found an enermous amount of success despite all the health setbacks that will undoubetly follow him for the rest of his career. The 2021-22 West Coast Conference Defensive Player of the Year has added to his resume a 2025 NBA title and 2026 NBA All-Star appearance most recently. Before that championship run in November of 2024, Holmgren was out for three months with a right iliac wing (pelvis) fracture.
Unfortunately, it’s not just him who has been hit with the injury bug within the Oklahoma City organization at this early point of the NBA calendar year. In the first two weeks alone, two additional starters have gone down for the Thunder.
Guard Jalen Williams – fractured left fibula/dislocated ankle
Guard Cason Wallace – torn labrum in his left shoulder
Williams, a lottery pick at No. 12 in the same 2022 NBA Draft from the Santa Clara Broncos, had the most severe of it all. Much too gruesome of an unfortunate live-action fall to share, the absolute worst that can came out of the game of basketball.
Arden Cravalho is a Gonzaga University graduate from the Bay Area… Follow him on X @a_cravalho
