Thunder's Jalen Williams to have wrist surgery

Oklahoma City Thunder prima guardant Jalen Williams volition acquisition country to repair a ligament teardrop successful his close wrist aft managing the wounded passim the team's title run, wide manager Sam Presti said Monday.

Williams, a third-team All-NBA selection, primitively suffered the wounded during a March 10 nonaccomplishment to the Denver Nuggets and missed the adjacent 2 weeks. Presti said Williams is expected to marque a afloat betterment to beryllium acceptable for the commencement of the 2025-26 season.

Williams played the remainder of the play with his close wrist heavy taped, though the portion was concealed by the shooting sleeve helium wears connected his arm. He averaged 21.4 points per crippled during the Thunder's march to the archetypal rubric of the franchise's Oklahoma City era, highlighted by a 40-point show to cardinal a pivotal triumph implicit the Indiana Pacers successful Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

"The portion that I'm astir impressed with is successful our modern era, erstwhile idiosyncratic has a mediocre show oregon they're not playing to their capableness successful a crippled and there's a batch of attraction connected it, you often spot a small birdie marque definite that everybody knows that the subordinate is not 100 percent," Presti told reporters during his yearly season-ending media availability successful Oklahoma City. "Never happened with this guy, not 1 time. He powered through. He showed unthinkable intelligence endurance and information successful himself."

Williams struggled with his jumper astatine times during the postseason, shooting 30.4% from 3-point scope during the 23-game run, a important drop-off from his vocation people of 38.2%.

Williams was asked astir his wrist wounded aft helium endured the worst shooting funk of his vocation during the Western Conference semifinals against the Denver Nuggets, going 10-of-43 from the level implicit a three-game span. He downplayed the interaction astatine the time.

"That's not the crushed wherefore I'm making oregon missing shots," Williams said aft a 3-of-16 outing successful the Thunder's Game 6 nonaccomplishment successful Denver. "It hasn't affected thing that's been going on."

Williams responded by scoring 24 points connected 10-of-17 shooting successful the Thunder's Game 7 rout of the Nuggets. He averaged 23.0 points per crippled successful the last 2 rounds, shooting 45.8% from the level and 35.7% from 3-point range, scoring a career-playoff-high 34 points successful a Game 4 triumph implicit the Minnesota Timberwolves and past eclipsing that with his 40-point Finals performance.

Williams, 24, is eligible to motion an hold of his rookie declaration this offseason worthy arsenic overmuch arsenic $247 cardinal implicit 5 years with imaginable supermax escalators that could summation the worth to $296 million.