Spain’s 2-0 semifinal win over France in the FIFA World Cup didn’t just end one team’s run Tuesday - it also lit up a familiar NBA rivalry.
Chet Holmgren, the Oklahoma City Thunder center whose back-and-forth with Spurs star Victor Wembanyama has become one of the league’s most watched storylines, jumped on social media to salute Spain after the result. The post was short, but plenty of people saw it as a shot at his French counterpart.
"Shoutout to Spain and shoutout to Lamine Yamal that kid is a problem," Holmgren wrote via Threads.
The reaction came fast because this isn’t some new tension. Holmgren and Wembanyama first met on the international stage in 2021, when Team USA and France played in the FIBA U19 World Cup Final in Riga, Latvia. Holmgren’s team came away with an 83-81 win, and he was named tournament MVP.
Wembanyama answered back this year. San Antonio knocked Oklahoma City out in a hard-fought seven-game Western Conference Finals series in May, with Wemby outplaying Holmgren across the matchup, winning Western Conference Finals MVP and sending the Spurs to their first NBA Finals appearance since 2014.
Holmgren never mentioned Wembanyama by name, and the French star, a native of Le Chesnay, France, wasn’t directly referenced in the post. But in a rivalry this closely watched, even a casual soccer shoutout can get read as something bigger.
For now, it may just be a meme. Around these two, though, even that tends to look like beef.
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