Monday marked the return of Chet Holmgren, who missed 11 months rehabbing a Lisfranc injury he suffered last August. The right foot injury cost Holmgren the entire 2022-23 season and multiple surgeries.
After being cleared to play 5v5 basketball near the end of the season, Holmgren’s first opportunity to play in a game was against the Utah Jazz in summer league.
Holmgren quickly reminded fans why he went No. 2 in his draft class. In 29 minutes, he finished with 15 points, nine rebounds and an absurd four blocks.
Playing your first professional game after a major foot injury is a huge mental hurdle to overcome in any sport. Especially for someone like Holmgren, who never had a serious injury in his life prior to August.
Holmgren cleared that hurdle with ease on Monday.
“The foot feels great,” Holmgren said following the win. “It’s like the injury never happened, other than everything I had to go through, obviously. But at this point, if you erased my memory, I wouldn’t know that anything happened to my foot other than the scars from surgery.”
It appears his teammates agree.
“He’s playing like he never got injured, which is dope,” Jalen Williams said following the win. “I think a lot of guys probably have that wall where they’re kinda afraid to do a lot of things. You can kinda see him go out there and trust his work. He worked extremely work while we were playing on the road. Always rehabbing. … A lot of stuff that everybody didn’t get to see that we got to. I’m excited for him and hopefully he can continue to play throughout summer league.”
As Williams said, the next step for Holmgren involves continuing to play in summer league to get additional in-game reps. By the time the games start to matter in late October, Holmgren will likely have plenty of recent in-game experiences to lean on.
Holmgren also said he’ll continue to work on his conditioning after not playing for nearly a year. Playing at high altitude in his first game back likely resulted in his slow start.
“I’ll be ready by the time training camp starts,” Holmgren said. “I feel like I’ll have myself prepared to be in season shape.”
Who knows how many more summer league games Holmgren will play over the next couple of weeks, but if his ensuing outings look similar to what he did against the Jazz, then that should excite both himself and OKC.
