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Tim MacMahon
Oklahoma City Thunder star forward Jalen Williams will undergo surgery to repair a ligament tear in his right wrist after managing the injury throughout the team’s championship run, general manager Sam Presti said Monday.
Williams, a third-team All-NBA selection, originally suffered the injury during a March 10 loss to the Denver Nuggets and missed the next two weeks. Presti said Williams is expected to make a full recovery to be ready for the start of the 2025-26 season.
Williams played the rest of the season with his right wrist heavily taped, though the tape was concealed by the shooting sleeve he wears on his arm. He averaged 21.4 points per game during the Thunder’s march to the first title of the franchise’s Oklahoma City era, highlighted by a 40-point performance to key a pivotal win over the Indiana Pacers in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
“The part that I’m most impressed with is in our modern era, when someone has a poor performance or they’re not playing to their capability in a game and there’s a lot of attention on it, you often see a little birdie make sure that everybody knows that the player is not 100 percent,” Presti told reporters during his annual season-ending media availability in Oklahoma City. “Never happened with this guy, not one time. He powered through. He showed incredible mental endurance and security in himself.”
Williams struggled with his jumper at times during the postseason, shooting 30.4% from 3-point range during the 23-game run, a significant drop-off from his career mark of 38.2%.
Williams was asked about his wrist injury after he endured the worst shooting funk of his career during the Western Conference semifinals against the Denver Nuggets, going 10-of-43 from the floor over a three-game span. He downplayed the impact at the time.
“That’s not the reason why I’m making or missing shots,” Williams said after a 3-of-16 outing in the Thunder’s Game 6 loss in Denver. “It hasn’t affected anything that’s been going on.”
Williams responded by scoring 24 points on 10-of-17 shooting in the Thunder’s Game 7 rout of the Nuggets. He averaged 23.0 points per game in the final two rounds, shooting 45.8% from the floor and 35.7% from 3-point range, scoring a career-playoff-high 34 points in a Game 4 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves and then eclipsing that with his 40-point Finals performance.
Williams, 24, is eligible to sign an extension of his rookie contract this offseason worth as much as $247 million over five years with potential supermax escalators that could increase the value to $296 million.