The noodle that captivates the NBA

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Chet Holmgren

looks like a cartoon.

The 88 kilos of him are not enough to fill his 2.13 meters of height.

A body, more bone than flesh, that he moves with an agility that should be forbidden to him.

It is the response of genetics to that basketball that demands more and more mobility from its giants, and a promise that divides the experts in this NBA draft.

Almost everyone agrees that he will be chosen in the top three, but can he survive among adults?

When

arrived from Baloncesto Sevilla,

He called it a 'unicorn' because of its mix of size, agility and outside talent.

As players have emerged from that cut, the term has spread so much that it has lost its meaning: they are no longer something unique, but the evolution that the current NBA rewards, where positions give way to functions that are not linked to size.

But even in that context, Chet Holmgren finds no precedent.

In one of the first videos of him to go viral, as a 17-year-old on a

campus , Holmgren dribbled past the Warriors star, passing the ball twice behind his back to finish with a two-handed dunk.

More than rudeness to a double MVP, anecdotal in that scenario, he highlighted the coordination of a body of 2.13 with arms that outstretched exceed 2.30 wingspan.

Chet Holmgren is a resounding talent.

His offensive profile fits with the current game:

(39% on 3s, shooting more than three per game).

He's a good passer, and he has ball handling and fluidity that's unbecoming of someone his size.

Some pundits see him as an update to the first

, but his impact is to be less on offense and more on defense.

Because behind him he makes up for the lack of body with great mobility and good reads.

But it is precisely there where the doubt lies: if even in this NBA where freedom of movement prevails over the more physical game of the post,

.

An unprecedented problem

Holmgren poses the opposite problem to

.

The one who was number one in the 2019 draft arrived with two bare meters and 129 kilos.

A physicist consulted by the 'Wall Street Journal' calculated that crashing into him was like being run over by an SUV at 16 kilometers per hour.

There were questions about how much that wall could hold without collapsing.

And to date he has played 85 games out of a possible 226.

He hasn't played since May 2021.

Holmgren is a foot taller than Williamson and weighs forty kilos less.

Players like

or

also arrived with little body, but with more shoulders to fill;

hers barely hold the straps of the shirt.

By

His passing through the pre-draft physical measurements is famous, where he was not able to lift the minimum weight on the bench press once, but he was one of the greatest offensive talents in history.

During his time at Gonzaga University, where he has played last season, Chet Holmgren has shown the conditions to be a more than remarkable defender, a very versatile attacker, and a toughness that does not match that body.

But without the ease of gaining weight of some, nor the supernatural ability to score of the other, his challenge will be to find a way to transplant into the NBA a talent that has led him to be MVP of the 2021 Under-19 World Cup, named in the second best quintet in college basketball and almost certainly a top three pick in the 2022 draft.

The other names of the 2022 draft

Jabari Smith Jr.

(son of a player of the same name who left a bad memory at CB Granada) is emerging as the main candidate for number one in this draft.

The Orlando Magic have spent a decade trying to overcome the goodbye of

, and in him they would have an extraordinary shooter of 2.08 and a good defender.

The other contender to be chosen in the top three is

, a versatile scorer trained at Duke and on whom the Italian team has already cast their nets.

Yes.

As the pools point out, Holmgren ends up with the OKC Thunder at number two, he would end up with the Houston Rockets forming a pair with

.

Without

or

, who withdrew their candidacy at the last minute, the presence of Spanish basketball in this draft could be in the hands of

(Italy, Real Madrid),

(RD Congo, Unicaja Málaga) and

(Senegal, Gran Canaria).

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