Is Victor Wembanyama Running Away From Chet Holmgren for Rookie of the Year?
With the NBA regular season winding down, finalists and candidates for each major awards for the league are becoming more known. For the Oklahoma City Thunder, there could be four different members of the team in the running.
Thunder Rookie Chet Holmgren will be a finalist for Rookie of the Year, though it seems unlikely he’ll be able to take the award from Victor Wembanyama.
Holmgren is averaging 16.9 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.5 blocks per game in 30 minutes per game. His impact has been huge on both sides of the floor, elevating the Thunder’s ceiling tremendously in his first season in the NBA.
Two ESPN analysts, Bobby Marks and Kevin Pelton, seem to believe the Rookie of the Year race is all but over.
“This is not to say the rookie of the year race between Wembanyama and Holmgren is over, but it is time to start putting Wembanyama in the All-NBA and All-Defensive discussion,” ESPN wrote.
Evidently, Wembanyama in his role as the primary scorer had been able to separate himself statistically from Holmgren to win the award. Still, Holmgren and the Thunder are in a position to be playing basketball well into April.
“Atypically for a star rookie, Holmgren will have the opportunity to make a significant impact in the playoffs with the Thunder battling for the top seed in the Western Conference,” Pelton wrote.
Helping his team into a top seed in the Western Conference is an edge Holmgren has over Wembanyama, and for that reason, the race shouldn’t be quite over.
It’s been written from the beginning, though. Wembanyama has garnered every bit of media attention since he entered the league, and it’s hard to imagine that doesn’t help him cruise to a Rookie of the Year victory.
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