Chet Holmgren returns to Minnesota for his debut game as a Thunder player

On Wednesday, the NBA released the full season schedule for the Thunder and it was revealed that Chet’s debut will take place against the Timberwolves in the Target Center. As debuts go, it cannot get much better for Holmgren.

Chet starts his career playing in Minnesota, the state where he grew up, and against top level competition. Tim Connelly, in his first offseason as President of Basketball Operations for the T-Wolves has added depth to a roster looking to go deep into the playoffs.

Rudy Gobert, Kyle Anderson and Bryn Forbes all join Karl Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards in Minneapolis. There has been a lot of talk about Holmgren’s lack of size and this will be the perfect game to prove the doubters wrong. Towns and Gobert are both physical seven footers who know how to maximise their frame.

I am already excited and the game is still two months away. The Thunder and T-Wolves always seem to have exciting, closely fought contests. Who can forget Andrew Wiggins draining a buzzer-beating three to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? Who can forget Steven Adams’ touchdown pass to Dennis Schroder to send the game to overtime?

The full schedule details were reported by Brandon Rahbar of Daily Thunder.

The other important news item from the schedule being released is that the Thunder have a nationally televised game for the first time in years. Oklahoma City will play the Orlando Magic on November 1st in a game broadcast on TNT.

This is another exciting match-up for the Thunder. We finally get to see Chet Holmgren and Paolo Banchero go at it. The top two draft picks from the 2022 NBA Draft have completely opposite games but play with a similar fire and intensity. Banchero and Holmgren both lead by example and hate to lose games.

The Thunder’s schedule will be hard for the first two months of the season. Oklahoma City will play a lot of teams with legitimate championship aspirations. It would not be surprising to see the Thunder go two weeks without a win.

The schedule gets easier after All-Star break but it is hard to say whether the Thunder will still be trying to win games at that point in the year. If the Thunder have a terrible win-loss record in February, it makes a lot of sense to be bad and tank for Wembanyama.

OKC are a young team who face a challenging start to the year. It will not be easy but it will be a good opportunity to see who stands up to adversity. I am pretty confident that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will come out of the gates quickly as he attempts to finally secure that elusive All-Star appearance.

Can everyone else match his level? That is the question to be answered in the first two months of the season. It is hard to predict in the middle of August but it will definitely be interesting to watch in October.