Thunder went 46-8 when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played without Chet Holmgren over the last two seasons: what his 8-to-10-week absence means in numbers

Oklahoma City is about to find out how much of its last two seasons ran through Chet Holmgren. The Thunder said on Friday that Holmgren had a biological treatment for a small tear in his right patellar tendon and is expected back in eight to 10 weeks. On the current schedule, that is at least 23 games and as many as 31, starting with Saturday night in Houston, before any NBA Cup knockout games are added.

The Thunder have been here before. Holmgren missed 50 games in 2024-25 with a fractured pelvis and 13 more last season. We went through the box score of every Oklahoma City regular-season game since 2023-24, 251 in all, to see how the team played with him and without him. The NBA Cup championship game, which does not count in the standings, was left out. Games played were checked against Basketball-Reference.

The numbers that stand out

Over the last two seasons, the Thunder went 46-8 in games Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played and Holmgren did not. They outscored opponents by 12.7 points per 100 possessions in those games, slightly more than the 12.4 they managed with both players on the floor (73-17)
In the 2024-25 stretch that started with Holmgren’s pelvic fracture in November, Oklahoma City went 32-7 and won by 13.1 points a game. It finished 68-14 and won the title
Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 34.1 points in the 54 games without Holmgren, against 30.7 in the 90 games with him
When neither played, the Thunder were 4-5 and were outscored by 1.1 points per 100 possessions. Most of those games came at the end of seasons, when the top seed was already settled
With Gilgeous-Alexander playing and both Holmgren and Jalen Williams out, Oklahoma City went 10-1 over the last two seasons. Williams is now out after ankle surgery too
Holmgren has played 186 of the Thunder’s 333 regular-season games since they drafted him second overall in 2022, or 55.9%. He missed all of his first season after foot surgery

The Thunder with and without Holmgren, season by season

Season	Games with Holmgren	Record	Point differential per game	Games without Holmgren	Record	Point differential per game
2023-24	82	57-25	+7.4	0	–	–
2024-25	32	26-6	+12.3	50	42-8	+13.2
2025-26	69	56-13	+12.8	13	8-5	+2.2
2026-27	3	3-0	+10.3	2	1-1	-6.5

Regular season only. 2024-25 excludes the NBA Cup championship game. 2026-27 is through Friday’s games.

Why the record hides what Holmgren does

The won-lost record says the Thunder barely missed him. The detail is less comfortable. In the 50 games without Holmgren in 2024-25, Oklahoma City allowed 103.4 points per 100 possessions, better than the 106.7 it allowed with him. But opponents also made only 32.1% of their 3-pointers in those games, against 37.3% when he played. Holmgren does not guard most 3-point shots, and a gap that size usually owes as much to luck as to anything a defense does.

Last season’s 13 games without him point the other way. The Thunder went 8-5 and were outscored by enough in the losses that their margin fell to plus-2.2 a game. Five of those 13 games were also missing Gilgeous-Alexander, and Oklahoma City went 1-4 in them, including losses of 20 in Denver and 32 against Phoenix in the last week of the regular season. In the eight games Gilgeous-Alexander played without Holmgren, the Thunder went 7-1.

Who played, 2024-25 and 2025-26	Games	Record	Points scored per 100 possessions	Points allowed per 100 possessions	Net per 100 possessions	Opponents’ 3-point %
Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren	90	73-17	117.1	104.8	+12.4	37.1%
Gilgeous-Alexander without Holmgren	54	46-8	116.9	104.3	+12.7	33.7%
Holmgren without Gilgeous-Alexander	11	9-2	117.3	105.3	+12.0	34.1%
Neither	9	4-5	109.1	110.2	-1.1	33.2%

Possessions estimated from box scores. Regular season only, NBA Cup championship game excluded.

This block from Chet Holmgren 😤

The big-time two-hand stuff was one of his game-high 4 BLK to go along with 17 REB in last night's win for the Thunder 🌩️ pic.twitter.com/IOvIBqIGeG
— NBA (@NBA) October 23, 2026

This time the rotation is thinner

The 2024-25 team that went 32-7 without Holmgren still had Jalen Williams for all but a handful of those games, plus Isaiah Hartenstein for most of them after he returned from a broken hand. This year’s team has already lost Williams to ankle surgery and Cason Wallace to shoulder surgery, with Wallace not due to be re-evaluated until the end of the regular season. Alex Caruso is out with a sprained right ankle, and Nikola Topić and Thomas Sorber are recovering from surgery. The Thunder signed Ochai Agbaji on Friday to fill their 15th roster spot.

The early numbers show the strain on the offense more than the defense. Oklahoma City is 4-1, but through Friday it ranked 23rd in points per 100 possessions at about 106 and fifth in points allowed at about 103, using the same box-score estimate. Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 26.0 points, below the 30.7 he averaged in games with Holmgren over the last two seasons, and his streak of 20-point games ended at 141 on Oct. 22. In the two games Holmgren has already missed, Ajay Mitchell scored 30 against Phoenix and 29 in the 120-96 loss at Dallas.

Holmgren was averaging 12.0 points, 9.3 rebounds and 3.0 blocks in three games, including 17 rebounds and four blocks against Denver on Oct. 22.

What to watch

Oklahoma City plays at Houston on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET, 2:30 a.m. Sunday in Cairo. The Rockets are 5-1 after losing their first game at Dallas on Friday. The Thunder then play Cleveland twice, at Memphis and against Washington in the next week. On the eight-week timeline, Holmgren would be due back around the Thunder’s Christmas Day game at Minnesota. On the 10-week timeline, it would be the second week of January.