Friday Bolts: Oh No
Chet Holmgren is out for the year, tabling his hyped rookie season until 2023-24. Thunder fans have seen this movie before, acutely familiar with both his particular "oh no" tall guy foot injury (Lisfranc) and losing integral players for entire seasons. The first thing I ever published about Thunder basketball was a silly but half-serious musing on the seemingly cursed nature of the franchise, back when Kevin Durant was nursing his own severe foot injury.
Sports are dumb and emotional, and emotional, dumb creatures like us can't resist second-guessing or pointing fingers when something bad happens to a player. There isn't really a reason to entertain arguments linking Chet's injured foot to the longstanding concerns about his thin frame. And while the court conditions in Seattle were hazardous, playing offseason basketball at a league sanctioned, Pro-Am event alongside LeBron James (notoriously wreckless with his body) was not risky behavior for a hungry player who would be playing somewhere this offseason regardless. The injury does look fluky and contact-dependent on tape, contrary to what the wet floor truthers would have you believe. I'd prefer we dabble in metaphysical blame games than pseudo-scientific ones, anyway, so here are some other colorful options upon which you might wish to pin this tragedy:
