Oklahoma City Thunder guard Jalen Williams will miss at least a week with a Grade 1 left hamstring strain, the team announced Thursday. Williams picked up the injury in the team’s 120-107 win against the Phoenix Suns in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series on Wednesday.
Williams played 23 minutes in the game, but exited in the third quarter after being seen grabbing at his left hamstring after landing following a missed layup. A couple of possessions later, as he was trying to defend Devin Booker, he grabbed at the hamstring again and then immediately exited the game. Williams went back to the locker room and was listed as questionable, but he never returned to the game.
Here’s where the injury occurred:
It’s an unfortunate situation for Williams, who has dealt with two separate hamstring injuries this season, limiting him to just 33 games in the regular season. However, unlike the previous two instances, this is Williams’ left hamstring that will keep him out for at least a week.
The timing couldn’t be worse for the Thunder, as Williams was just starting to look like his old self in the first two games of this series. In Game 1, he had 22 points on an absurd 60% from the floor to go along with seven rebounds and six assists. Before the injury forced him to exit Game 2, Williams was painting another masterpiece with 19 points on 63% from the floor.
Thunder guard Alex Caruso said that until the injury, Williams’ play looked familiar.
“I might be naïve in saying this: It looked like he was himself,” Caruso said after the game. “It didn’t look out of the ordinary, which I think is just a testament to how good of a talent he is. Playing both sides of the ball like that. Being decisive. Being aggressive. It looked like him.”
But now the Thunder will have to do what they’ve done for most of the season: carry on without J-Dub. Fortunately, with how dominant OKC has been in the first round, not having Williams may not be that significant a loss right now, especially as they’ve grown accustomed to playing without him this season. The other positive is that the injury isn’t worse, so this doesn’t seem to be a situation where Williams will be lost for most of the postseason.
Typically, with the Thunder being the No. 1 seed, this could be a situation where OKC would be conservative with Williams’ return so as to not re-aggravate it given his history with hamstring injuries. However, looking at how the rest of the West playoff series are playing out, OKC may have to play a Lakers team that could be getting healthy at the right time.
The Lakers are surprisingly up 2-0 against the Houston Rockets, despite being without Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves. LeBron James has managed to turn back the clock once more to defy Father Time, and he’s getting help from an unlikely place in Luke Kennard, who is leading L.A. in scoring with 25 points per game to start the series. Though Dončić is still out indefinitely with no firm timetable for his return, Reaves could return in the first round, as he’s further along in his rehab process.
If Reaves manages to come back in the first round, Dončić is able to return in the second round and Williams is still out, all of a sudden, the Lakers have the health advantage over the Thunder in the hypothetical series. While OKC won every matchup against L.A. in the regular season, what Dončić is able to do in the playoffs negates that regular-season success. We already know the kind of magic James is capable of pulling off in the postseason, so if the Lakers manage to get healthy just in time to play the Thunder, it’s crucial that OKC is also at full strength. Otherwise, those hopes of repeating as champions could be in jeopardy.
