On the morning after Oklahoma City’s Game 7 loss, ClutchPoints’ NBA insider Brett Siegel shared his verdict on X, stating that the Thunder should trade Chet Holmgren and draft picks for Giannis Antetokounmpo. Kendrick Perkins and Stephen A. Smith were among the chorus within hours. And when Draymond Green sat down to record, the trade talk had escalated to a level he could no longer ignore, and he had something to say about every single person fuelling it.

“I did not love the way it went,” he said of Holmgren’s four-point, two-shot Game 7. “Bro, you gotta go down swinging. And it just didn’t feel like Chet went down swinging.” The criticism, Green said, is warranted. The response to it is not. “Acting like he’s just a bum and he should be traded, all of that talk is ridiculous and premature, and it’s the exact way that franchises set themselves back and never grow.”

The résumé Green defended was not a thin one. This season, Holmgren averaged 17.1 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks, earning All-Star, All-NBA Third Team, and First Team All-Defense honours in the same year. Green made that case in real time: “Chet was just second in Defensive Player of the Year voting. All-Defense First Team. All-NBA Third Team. All-Star. And he had a bad playoff series and everybody was like, ‘Oh, time to trade him.’” His frustration wasn’t with the criticism. “What about: this guy needs to go back and get in the lab and get better? Why is it always we need to trade him?”

The franchise reportedly already answered that question internally. Per Brett Siegel, OKC is “by no means” looking to move Holmgren, a position that aligned precisely with Green’s read. “Sam’s not even gonna hang up in their face,” Green said of any GM bold enough to call Presti with a Holmgren offer. “I’m not trading Chet, hungry.” The punchline landed because it’s the right answer: Holmgren is entering the first year of a five-year, $239 million rookie max extension, a commitment OKC made based on what he is, not what he did against Wembanyama in seven games.

2x MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander made the team’s stance on the 2022 No. 2 draft pick clear. “We need Chet. We just, we need Chet Holmgren,” he said. “Before Chet was here, we weren’t who we are today. We didn’t have the success we’ve had today. When he’s the best version of himself, we’re the best version of ourselves, and it’s no secret.”

When Chet Holmgren arrived in Oklahoma City for his rookie season in 2023-24, the Thunder vaulted from 10th in the previous season to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, the youngest squad in NBA history to do so. Mark Daigneault agreed: “Every minute Chet has been on the team, we’ve been the one seed in the Western Conference, and it wasn’t the case before Chet was healthy.”

The Canadian admitted that he didn’t perform to his “greatest” in this series either. And with the off-season approaching, he acknowledged that “Chet won’t come to me with a development plan for this summer. I know how much Chet loves this game and wants to be the best version of himself out there every night. And sometimes it just doesn’t go that way. The version of Chet that we have today is the worst version of Chet we’ll ever have. I’ve said that literally every time I talk about Chet.”

Green’s Real Message, and the Moves OKC Actually Needs to Make

The idea in Green’s take was what separated it from a simple defence. He asserted. “They will have to make some moves,” he said, before naming the actual candidates: Dort, Hartenstein, picks, Wiggins. “They’re gonna have to make some tough decisions for sure. Maybe they trade some picks because if they sign their 12th and 17th pick and keep those, it’s gonna cost them 80 million dollars over the course of those two players.” The Thunder are projected to carry over $250 million in salary next season before the luxury tax, which means decisions are coming. Green’s argument is simply that Holmgren shouldn’t be the one bearing the cost of a series loss.

Holmgren’s Wembanyama problem is real and documented, but it is also specific. Against the Lakers in the second round, he averaged 20 points, 9.8 rebounds, 1.5 blocks, and 1.5 steals while shooting 52.9% from the floor, a dominant two-way showing that made the WCF regression land harder by comparison rather than reflecting a season-long trend.

The matchup against the best player in the world exposed his limitations at the rim. Green’s prescription for that problem was direct: “Get back in the lab. Be motivated this summer. You wouldn’t have gotten to where you are if you weren’t that guy.” He closed with the one line he wanted Holmgren to carry into the offseason: “Never go down without swinging again.”

Holmgren, for his part, agreed: “It comes down to looking at the tape. Figuring out where I can improve individually, trust in my work through the offseason.” Rookies usually struggle in the playoffs due to a sharp change in intensity. Even Victor Wembanyama, the generational big, struggled during his first postseason, failing to sink a three-pointer after going 0-for-5 in a tough shooting slump.

“Trade Chet Holmgren? It’s blasphemous,” Green said. The Thunder’s front office appears to agree. The question OKC’s offseason actually needs to answer is how to build around SGA without dismantling what already works, and it doesn’t begin with moving the second-best player on a team that just won the West last year.