Life After Gonzaga: Playoffs Edition

Twelve former Zags logged NBA minutes this season. Seven reached the playoffs. And for the first time in program history, two Gonzaga alumni started in the NBA Finals. Chet Holmgren anchored Oklahoma City’s defense and now joins Adam Morrison, Austin Daye, and Ronny Turiaf as Gonzaga products with NBA rings. Andrew Nembhard delivered the two-way consistency that held the Pacers’ offense together and—arguably—kept their season alive. This postseason marked a shift in how Zag contributions register at the next level. Nembhard changed Indiana’s halfcourt identity. Holmgren changed how teams attacked (or failed to attack) the paint.

In previous years, minutes alone felt like progress for former Zags. This time, responsibility increased—and so did the stakes. For the first time, the Gonzaga impact on the NBA postseason was undeniable and on full display.

Jalen Suggs – Orlando Magic

Orlando finished the regular season 41–41, securing the seventh seed in the East and setting up a first-round matchup with Boston that lasted just five games. Jalen Suggs missed the series entirely, having been ruled out in late February after experiencing persistent discomfort during return-to-play activities; further imaging revealed a trochlea injury in his left knee, ending his season and removing the team’s most disciplined on-ball defender and most reliable decision-maker from the rotation. Without him, Orlando’s perimeter defense fractured at the point of attack, and offensive possessions stalled as the responsibility to initiate fell almost exclusively to Paolo Banchero. No one else on the roster could replicate Suggs’ ability to hold defensive structure, absorb primary assignments, and move the ball into space under pressure. The Magic remained competitive in stretches, but the absence of their most complete guard exposed the limits of a young core still learning how to navigate playoff tempo. A full breakdown of Suggs’ season will appear on this site in the coming weeks. What’s clear for now is that his absence left structural gaps the Magic couldn’t patch—and once the playoffs began, those gaps dictated the terms of their exit.

Brandon Clarke – Memphis Grizzlies

Memphis spent most of the year positioning for a top-four seed before unraveling into the play-in and getting swept by Oklahoma City without much resistance. The collapse cost them a coach, fractured the roster’s timeline, and marked their third first-round exit in four seasons. Brandon Clarke never made it to the postseason. He was ruled out in late March with a high-grade PCL sprain—his second major lower-body injury in two years, and a brutal coda to what had been a promising return from last season’s Achilles tear. He’d made 64 appearances, averaged 8.3 points and 5.1 rebounds in under 19 minutes per game, and stabilized second units that never fully recovered once he went down. Like Jalen Suggs in Orlando, Clarke was sidelined before the playoffs began—and like the Magic, the Grizzlies spent the postseason trying to backfill a role that had no internal replacement. When Ja Morant suffered a series-ending hip injury in Game 3, the roster fully collapsed. Clarke remains under contract through 2027, but his future—as with much of Memphis’s core—now hinges on availability, adaptability, and whether the franchise still believes the window is open.

Rui Hachimura – Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers flamed out in five games against Minnesota, undone by rebounding deficits, fourth-quarter stagnation, and a rotation that never addressed its interior gaps. Rui Hachimura wasn’t the problem. He started all five games, averaged 14.8 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 36.4 minutes, and shot 48 percent from three while spacing the floor around LeBron and Doncic with a level of composure that belied the dysfunction around him. He scored 23 points in each of the final two games—both must-win scenarios—and was one of the few Lakers who didn’t shrink when the possessions got slower and the floor got tighter. Hachimura had battled through patellar tendinopathy during the regular season, missed several weeks, and returned still working his way back to full strength. But once the playoffs opened, Redick committed to him, and Rui responded with his best stretch of the season. His performance didn’t change the series, but it made a case. He remains one of the roster’s few functional forwards who can shoot, finish, absorb physicality, and hold mismatches without tilting the defense. With one year left on his deal, he may be moved. He also may be exactly the kind of player this version of the Lakers can’t afford to lose.

Julian Strawther – Denver Nuggets

Julian Strawther logged minutes in seven of Denver’s first eight playoff games, splitting time between low-leverage first halves and late-clock substitutions, and totaled just 17 points through the Nuggets’ seven-game first-round series against the Clippers and the opening stretch of their semifinal matchup with Oklahoma City. His postseason presence felt theoretical more than functional—promising on paper, but rarely tested when the games tightened. That changed in Game 6 against the Thunder. With Denver trailing 3–2 in the series and one loss from elimination, Strawther played 20 minutes off the bench and scored 15 points in the second half alone, finishing 4-of-7 from the field, 3-of-4 from deep, and 4-for-4 from the line in what quickly became the most impactful performance of his young career. His shooting spaced the floor, his confidence cracked open a stagnant halfcourt offense, and his timing—after a full postseason of waiting—shifted the energy inside Ball Arena almost instantly. Fans lost their minds. The NBA TV crew dubbed it “the Julian Strawther Game” before it ended. Denver would go on to drop Game 7, ending their season one round short of another conference finals run, but that didn’t undo what Strawther had done. He went from rotation afterthought to Game 6 hero in the span of a single half, and in doing so, earned something far less temporary than applause: trust.

Anton Watson – New York Knicks

Anton Watson opened his rookie season on a two-way contract with the Celtics, spent most of the year in the G League, and was waived in early March. Two days later, he was claimed by the Knicks—a team that went on to beat Detroit in six games, eliminate Boston in the second round, and reach the Eastern Conference Finals. Watson made nine regular season appearances for New York, never logged more than four minutes, and scored a total of eight points. He didn’t play in the postseason. But he finished the year in uniform, practicing with a team that outpaced expectations and knocked out the franchise that let him go. For a second-round pick taken 54th overall, that’s not a bad place to land. Whether he sticks will depend on whether New York sees enough to keep developing him—or decides they already have enough pieces in place. Either way, he got closer to the Finals than most rookies ever do.

Andrew Nembhard – Indiana Pacers

Andrew Nembhard spent the postseason doing what no one outside of Gonzaga or Indiana seemed prepared to expect—guarding the best scorers in the world and systematically taking them apart. He opened the playoffs face-guarding Damian Lillard, tracked Donovan Mitchell through off-ball motion in round two, blanketed Jalen Brunson across six grinding games in the Eastern Conference Finals, and matched up with league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the biggest stage of all. Across those series, his primary assignments shot a combined 30.9 percent from the field when guarded by him. That isn’t a fluke. That’s coverage integrity, positional discipline, film study, and controlled footwork converging over seven weeks of postseason basketball. And while the numbers offer a useful shorthand—38.2 percent for Brunson, 23.3 for Mitchell, 23.1 for Lillard, 41.2 for Gilgeous-Alexander—they don’t fully capture how quickly Nembhard changed the structure of the game just by being on the floor.

Offensively, he scaled to the moment. In the first round against Milwaukee, he averaged 15 points and 4.8 assists, played with tempo, picked his spots, and didn’t turn the ball over. In round two, he opened the Cleveland series with 23 points on 5-of-6 from deep, followed that with a 13-assist game in the next outing, and finished the series averaging over seven assists per game while helping Indiana close in five. His usage dipped in the conference finals, but his impact deepened—especially on the defensive end, where he pressured Brunson into tough pull-ups, disrupted dribble penetration, and played all six games without losing shape or showing fatigue. He hit a contested game-winning three in Game 3 to swing the series lead, recorded six steals in the closeout Game 6, and walked into the Finals playing the best basketball of his career.

Then the stakes spiked again. In Game 7 of the NBA Finals—already tasked with containing Gilgeous-Alexander—Nembhard was forced into full-time lead guard duty after Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in the first quarter. With Indiana’s offense compromised, he took on every backcourt responsibility: initiating sets, absorbing pressure, creating spacing, and defending the most dynamic scorer in the league. He averaged 11.7 points, 3.7 assists, and 2.4 turnovers per game in the series, shot 42.3 percent from deep, and played over 34 minutes a night. The Pacers fell one game short of a title, but Nembhard’s performance didn’t belong to a supporting piece. It belonged to someone Indiana can—and likely will—build around.

With Haliburton expected to miss the entirety of the 2025–26 season, Nembhard becomes the organizing force in Indiana’s backcourt. The franchise has already begun preparing for the shift, adding Marquette’s Kam Jones in the second round of the draft to help reinforce the rotation and balance the offensive workload. But the central question has already been answered. After a postseason that revealed more than just skill, Nembhard will enter next year not as a complementary option, not as a specialist, but as the player around whom Indiana now runs its offense, sets its perimeter matchups, and trusts to deliver on both ends. For those who’ve been watching closely, none of that feels like a surprise. It just took the rest of the league a little longer to catch up.

Chet Holmgren – Oklahoma City Thunder

Chet Holmgren was drafted into a rebuild and ended his second season atop the basketball world. In the 2025 NBA Playoffs, the 23-year-old Gonzaga product was the fulcrum of Oklahoma City’s defensive scheme and one of the most efficient rim protectors in the entire field. He opened the postseason by annihilating the Memphis Grizzlies—averaging 18.5 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 2.5 blocks per game on 42.3% shooting from three—before stepping into a seven-game war against Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets. Though Jokic got his numbers, Holmgren more than held his ground, finishing the series with 14.1 points and nearly 11 boards a night across 31 minutes, highlighted by a 19-and-11 effort in a pivotal Game 5 win.

He raised his efficiency again in the Western Conference Finals against Minnesota, averaging 18 points on 57% shooting from the field across five games. But it was in the Finals—where OKC finally clawed its way past a bruising Indiana team in seven games—where Holmgren etched his name into the history books. In the deciding Game 7, he racked up five blocks, setting a new NBA record for the most in a Finals Game 7, while anchoring a Thunder defense that held the Pacers under 95 points. His impact never came in flurries, but in volume—on the boards, on switches, in transition, on closeouts, and on weakside contests. His Finals averages—12.3 points, elite rebounding numbers, and a game-altering defensive presence—cemented his status as the most important non-SGA player on OKC’s title run.

We’d be remiss not to mention the complicated civic reality: for many NBA fans in the Pacific Northwest, watching the Thunder hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy feels like getting a postcard from the family that stole your house. While not every Gonzaga fan grew up rooting for the Sonics, there’s a vocal and deeply loyal subset of the region’s basketball faithful who will never forgive the Thunder for what they took. For those fans, watching a beloved Zag win a title in OKC blue might feel like chugging orange juice after brushing your teeth. That doesn’t mean they aren’t proud of Holmgren. It just means they need a second to wash out the taste.

Of course, Holmgren himself remains impossible not to root for. He’s 23 years old, a newly minted NBA champion, and already the poster child for a generation of stars who skipped the ramen-and-light-beer phase of their pre-NBA development entirely. Drafted at 20, bankrolled by Nike, and fast-tracked to stardom, Holmgren entered the league before most players finish learning how to open a Champagne bottle—something he clearly hadn’t mastered by the time OKC’s postgame locker room celebrations rolled around. In a now-viral moment, he even mispronounced Michelob as “mish-a-lobe” during a press conference, a perfectly innocent mistake that nonetheless proved the point: when you never have to drink cheap beer, you never learn how to say it.

If he’d stuck around Gonzaga a little longer, maybe he’d have picked up the pronunciation at a party or two. Then again, it’s hard to learn how to say Michelob when you weren’t old enough to buy it in college and too rich to bother looking for it once you were.