NBA Champions Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren on Drinking for the First Time, Watching Love Island, and Why Every Season Feels ‘Long as Shit’

Winning an NBA title isn’t just the culmination of an individual season—it’s a major inflection point in a basketball player’s life. Both Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren, key members of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s now immortal championship roster, have reached that milestone far younger than most. Williams, 24, broke out like a pimple this year. The dynamic shooting guard earned his first All-Star appearance—as well as an All-NBA and All-Defense nod—and poured in a monumental 40 points in the NBA Finals’ crucial fifth game. Holmgren, 23, overcame a mid-season injury and brutal shooting numbers in the Finals to secure a ring with some lockdown defense in the decisive Game 7.

Still basking in the glow of victory, both players jumped on a video call this week to try to contextualize everything they’d been through. The Thunder are well positioned to win it all again in 2026—something both dudes acknowledged—much to the chagrin of everyone who grew up rooting for the Seattle SuperSonics, the team that was uprooted to Oklahoma to become the Thunder in 2008. In the type of candid conversation that’s only possible with guys who have nothing left to prove, Williams and Holmgren got into that controversial relocation, why they use burner TikTok accounts, and the proper way to get turnt.

Chet Holmgren: I went until the morning after the parade.

Jalen Williams: I don’t know, actually. The guys went out again, maybe like a day ago. I think I stopped after the parade, I was done.

Williams: I had Don Julio. I had Casamigos. I had Reposado. I had a lemon drop. I had wine. The lemon drop was cool. The other stuff tastes like either rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer. I didn’t really like a lot of that stuff, so I’m going to go back to lemonade, Sprites, Shirley Temples, shit like that.

Williams: Yeah we mixed some, put some tequila in some stuff. That was cool. We got mixed drinks at the crib. That was better. I mixed some tequila and some shit I had at the house, so that was cool. But alcohol, not really [for me]. I don’t know how people drink as much as some people do, because if it’s not good, I’d rather get something good to drink!

Holmgren: This is what I don’t think Dub understands. I don’t think he got to the point where you don’t taste it anymore. That’s how people drink.

Williams: Yeah, that’s true. I didn’t get that far in.

Williams: When we win next year, I’ll do it again.

Holmgren: I see a lot of stuff about us on the internet, but most of it’s just me getting trolled, or honestly, most of it is people believing fake stuff about me. I don’t even know if I should care because, like, what can you even do about that? But some of it is funny too. I will give them credit. Like when they give me dreads and cornrows.

Williams: I see everything for the most part. I just got back on my Twitter. I was on a burner TikTok, low key, nothing about basketball. Otherwise you will see it. Like if you’re on your main…

Holmgren: It’ll be basketball.

Williams: The algorithm knows you play for the Thunder, so it’s going to be all that. I tried to stay clear of that while we were focused on the run, but it’s almost unavoidable. People will go make signs about it at the game, or people close to you will send you stuff. You inadvertently see everything. It’s hard not to, unless you just don’t have social media.

Holmgren: Everybody on the team has the exact same feed.

Williams: No cap! I’m behind, though.

Holmgren: I watched the first episode of this season, and didn’t even make it all the way through. I was like, “This is the stupidest thing ever.”

Williams: You gotta get past that! The first one’s hard to watch, because it’s like two hours. It’s too long.

Holmgren: Well, I can’t do that. That’s an American ass show. People really binge that. How many episodes is there? Isn’t it, like, a lot?

Williams: They have an episode every day except Wednesday.

Holmgren: Yeah, I don’t got time for that.

Williams: You got to watch it with somebody. It was really good, low key, during the playoffs. I was watching it with Two [Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] and Dillon [Jones], so that was cool. I’ll watch it with some of my friends. I’ll watch it with my girlfriend. But you can’t watch it alone. If I watch it alone, I’m not going to pay attention. You need somebody to argue with.

Holmgren: No. It was way more than I expected, and honestly, now I want to do it again, because I want to do it right. You know what I mean? I didn’t know what to expect, what the flow was going to be, but I enjoyed every second of it.

Williams: It’s hard, too. Like, to do it on a Tuesday in the morning! And it was two days after we won, so we didn’t even have time. You have to do it before the draft, so there was the rush of all that. We’re learning how to do it as we go, and we don’t have prep time for them to walk us through [it]. In the past, you get three, four days to figure out what to do.

Holmgren: It wasn’t like we were up [in the series] and could start planning. It went to Game 7!

Williams: We had two series go seven! We went to the furthest it almost could have gone.

Holmgren: Yeah, we made it way harder than it needed to be.

Holmgren: I already kind of started lifting again. But in terms of running, that’s not going to happen for a couple of weeks.

Williams: I haven’t done nothing, bro. I can’t lie.

Holmgren: You were All-NBA, All-Defense, All-Star, champion. You don’t need to run for a bit. You don’t need to do nothing.

Holmgren: I’ll probably be back in there sometime next week.

Williams: With basketball too, like, to get [back into a] shooting [rhythm] isn’t hard. That’s kind of a relaxing thing, too. We’re going to get to a point where we’re so bored, we’re going to stumble into a gym and shoot around. I know Chet probably does the same thing: you go mess around, and get a couple shots up, and then next thing you know, you’re working out. You have to be careful. It’s a fine line. Once I get in, I am going to be in there for two, three hours.

Holmgren: The one that gets me is, you can’t start talking shit with your homies, because then you end up going to the gym and playing one-on-one. If you’re in a public profession, where people are watching, you have to continue to perform. No matter what, they’re going to move the goalposts. They’ll say, “Oh, they couldn’t win a championship.” All right, we did that. Now, “They can’t do it again.” You know what I’m saying? So, we have to do it again.

Holmgren: Yeah, but you only shut them up for now, because it’s going to be a new narrative after that. You just have to understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to build interest and sell it. Talking shit sells, so that’s what they’re going to do.

Williams: That motivation is endless, it’s always going to be there. You actually kind of tire yourself out, if you’re constantly trying to shut up the Stephen A.’s of the world—if you’re constantly trying to prove something to them. Their job is to find something to trash you about. You got to find other outlets to be motivated. You can never be perfect to everybody. If you win 100 championships in a row, they’re always going to be like, “You didn’t win 101.”

Holmgren: And honestly, if they’re talking, that’s a good thing because that means you’re actually doing something relevant. During the NBA Finals, no one’s talking shit about the lottery teams. Shai’s the MVP, and I think he had more shit talked about him than anybody in the NBA.

Williams: Yeah, he’s good for our team. Usually when the head of the snake is like that, it trickles down.

Williams: [pointing] Him.

Holmgren: Growing up, I was like, make sure one of your teammates gets some shine, camera time, whatever. Somehow it ended up turning into the whole team.

Williams: I low key remember it, because Nick [sideline reporter Nick Gallo] was explaining it. It was him and Gid [former Thunder player Josh Giddey]. Then the next game, it was him and somebody else. Then me and J-Will [teammate Jaylin Williams] peeped it, and we started messing around in the interview. It just became, like, “Everybody, let’s mess around during the interview.” It just became [part of our] DNA, because we were winning, so it was fun. Then it was like, “How much can we get away with? Nick never breaks character, let’s try and get Nick.”

Then the barking happened, and we were like, “All right. If you haven’t barked in an interview, now you got to do it.” In a way, it was incentivizing winning a little bit, because you’re not going to do a team interview when you lose. If we win, we can get Coach to bark, or we can get Nick to bark, or whoever. That’s how it came about. Our team is so crazy, everybody started jumping into it. The games mesh together, bro. Like 82 games, sometimes it’s hard to make it fun, so that was something to look forward to every game.

Holmgren: I don’t have an opinion, I have a statement: It is long as shit. Unless you go through it, you really don’t understand it.

I played 10 games, I fractured my hip, and I still came back with 30 games left in the season. Then we played two and a half months of playoff basketball. It feels like before I broke my hip and after I broke my hip are two completely different seasons. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say shorten the season, because that’s less money for us.

Williams: It is less money.

Holmgren: I don’t think it’s too much, because at the end of the day, in order to win that championship, you have to go through it all. When you do win it, it’s so worth it.

Williams: We have different views on it now than before. When you don’t win, it’s like, yeah, the season is too long. It’s very weird. If you’re losing the whole season, it feels very long. Then, there’s parts of the season where we were doing so well, you don’t even realize how long it’s going on.

Holmgren and Williams during the first round of the playoffs, nearly two months ago to the day. Joe Murphy/Getty Images

Holmgren: Also, if you don’t make the playoffs, your summer is half the year. Your summer is six months! The season isn’t that long. It’s just a lot of games, because you play three and a half games a week. It’s a lot of games packed in pretty densely, especially with back-to-backs. But if you don’t make the playoffs, your season isn’t really that long. Last summer, I was already in LA working out for a month by now.

Williams: It’s not even about rest. You have to work on your game, bro. You just get more time.

Holmgren: But there is no substitute for actually playing those games. You can’t work out in the summer and simulate playing the Finals.

Williams: We also played a team [in the 2024 playoffs] that went to the Finals. Like Chet said, there’s no substitute for playing in the playoffs, and then we played a team that went to the Finals. We played one of the two best teams in the league at the time. We got a lot of prep.

Williams: I don’t remember a lot of shit that be happening until I see the game. Like, if I start watching, then you can pause it and I can walk you through the game. But to do it from here, no, I can’t.

Williams: I do remember Lu Dort’s 50-foot bomb that he made in Game 7.

Holmgren: Because he was what? One-for-seven in the first half?

Williams: Yeah, he hadn’t hit a three in a while.

Holmgren: I can’t do just one play. My favorite game was Game 4 with Minnesota. It was at the crib [note: Holmgren is from Minnesota] and the last six minutes of that game, both teams were going back and forth. There was a lot of big plays in that game.

Williams: The way we won Game 4 in Denver was cool. And then I’ll say, there was a crowd pop in Game 5 against Indiana. I got a steal, I think Tyrese [Haliburton] fouled me, and I got a layup. It was really loud, and I was yelling, but I couldn’t hear myself.

Holmgren: It was great. You’re in a tough spot, because those are your guys. You want to see them play good, but you want to see their team lose, obviously. Strawther had that big Game 6—that hurt my heart and made me happy at the same time.

Then Andrew...there is no such thing as a Shai stopper, like nobody in the league is shutting Shai down or guarding Shai one-on-one. I’m not trying to glaze, so let me chill. But what I’m trying to say is, Andrew guarded Shai probably better than I’ve seen anybody guard Shai. He made everything tough. He didn’t give him any easy ones, and that’s pretty much all you can do. Then on the other side, he was hitting big shots. He hit two just bullshit bombs over me in Game 7, but he had a hell of a series.

I’m happy for him because he’s a great dude. I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody. He’s a hell of a player.

Williams: No, that’s not as big of a part of my life as it probably is for him. I think it’s just shocking when people hear it, because it sounds made up.

Holmgren: If you meet his parents, and hang out around his parents now…

Williams: You wouldn’t guess it! But that’s just because they’re set, like they’re cool. They’re both retired now. Both their kids are in the NBA, so they’re way more chill than when they were trying to raise us up to be what we are now. I had a very fun childhood. People ask me, like, “Oh, do you like your parents?” Yeah! They were just strict about stuff, like being clean, putting stuff away. Making my bed was such a big point, because that’s how you start your day, and I don’t know, it just teaches you a lot. When I leave the crib, I try to leave the crib clean, so when I get back to the crib, it’s clean. You don’t want to come home to a messy house. Now, it’s just ingrained in my brain. But yeah, that did happen. That is very historically accurate. My mom will act like it didn’t happen.

Holmgren: I think it’s the first one in franchise history, because when y’all get a team, all the history is going to go back to Seattle. I feel like they’re two separate things.

Williams: Seattle has one?

Williams: Yeah, it’s definitely separate then. I don’t know if this is ignorant, but I don’t really understand the beef, to be honest. Yeah, I guess we stole the team, but wasn’t there some other stuff going on?

Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, shortly before the Sonics officially moved to Oklahoma City Jennifer Pottheiser/Getty Images

Williams: If you could do it in like…

Holmgren: 30 seconds.

Williams: SparkNotes.

Williams: You guys will get a team back pretty quick though, like in the next couple of years. The world has spoken. There’s a lot more money coming to the league, so there’ll be a team.

Holmgren: They’re pissed we left and now we’re good.

Williams: I think what confuses me, though, is the way OKC got the team—through the flood [Ed. note: After Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Hornets were briefly displaced to Oklahoma City, giving the city a test run for having its own NBA team]— [makes me think] there shouldn’t really be that much beef. It came out of something in American history that was really bad. So, there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it. But yeah, it’s a separate chip. I still wear Sonics gear! I’ve worn it throughout my career.