The OKC Thunder may have established All-Stars in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams leading the charge in the ball club's pecking order, but there's a case to be made that big man Chet Holmgren is the key to the team unlocking their full potential.
Recently, the folks at ESPN dropped the 50 through 11 section for their rankings of the top 100 players currently in the NBA.
To no surprise, Oklahoma City was well represented among the 89 names currently listed, as five members of their reigning championship roster fell inside the top 65.
Holmgren personally ranked in at 24 overall, with reporter Tim MacMahon specifically highlighting his status of being "one of the most dominant defensive presences in the NBA" as a major factor in his top-25 placement.
However, perhaps the most notable portion of his assessment of the big man was when MacMahon noted that the 7-footer "is scratching the surface of his offensive potential," and provided an eye-opening statistic that, during the 16 games last season where Holmgren dropped 20 or more points, the Thunder went 14-2.
While this alone should warrant serious excitement among the OKC fanbase, there's an even wilder and, frankly, more achievable full-season trend that should send shivers down the spines of all opposing teams in the association.
Thunder are virtually unstoppable when Chet Holmgren drops 19+ points
In games where Holmgren posted 19 or more points last year, the Thunder found themselves going 12-1 during the regular season, 18-3 if you include playoff action.
To put this into perspective, this equates to roughly a 76-win pace for OKC, three more than the all-time record of 73 held by the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors.
Now, considering his injury history, it's hard to bank on Holmgren being active for all 82 games this coming year. However, should he stave off any substantial health ailments and find himself regularly dropping 19 points a night while sustaining his dominant defensive impact, there seems to be a good chance this ball club could become the third team in history to claim 70 or more wins.
After all, despite widespread injury woes last season that saw the Thunder roll out 30 different starting lineups and hold Holmgren to just 32 games played, they still were able to rattle off 68 wins, tied for the fifth-most in league history.
Should Chet remain healthy and up his scoring averages to somewhere around the 19.0 range, which, let's not forget, he was already averaging 18.2 points on 51.9 percent shooting from the field and 40.0 percent shooting from deep in the nine games he played prior to his right iliac wing fracture last season, this clear juggernaut of a Thunder team could realistically become virtually unstoppable.