@thesportsontap: The last time something was wrong with him, he did not tell anybody. April, in Phoenix. A loose ball, a hand yanked back the wrong way against Devin Booker, and a torn ligament in his right wrist. He finished the game. The MRI came back the next day. Then he played every single playoff game on it. He rebuilt his jump shot to do it. Lower set, more legs. He took a lidocaine injection before every playoff game. And he said nothing about any of it until the summer. "I just didn't want that to be an excuse on my performance." He averaged 23.6 points in the Finals and put up 40 in Game 5 at home. Oklahoma City won the title and he had surgery on July 1. That is Jalen Williams, and that is the part worth remembering this morning. He was born in Denver, grew up outside Phoenix, and went to Perry High School in Gilbert, Arizona. Both of his parents are Air Force. Ronald and Nicole met playing basketball at the Air Force Academy. His father gave it 24 years. His mother gave it 12. He was 5 foot 11 and skinny as a freshman and grew five inches before he was done. Nobody in the Power 5 offered him anything. Santa Clara took him, and four years later he went 12th in the draft. With 1:14 left against the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday he drove in, took the contact, and his left leg folded underneath him on the landing. He went out on a stretcher and the whole building stood up. Oklahoma City won it 108 to 101 and nobody cared. Be straight about where this is. The Thunder have not put a name on it or a timeline. Some of these cost a man a year. Nobody knows yet, including him. Then Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said the thing everybody needed. "He's not gone forever. He'll be back better than ever, and we know it." He is 25, he has already won a championship on a wrist that did not work, and his parents spent a combined 36 years showing up for something hard. He will be worth waiting for. #NBA #nbanews #basketball #thunder #okcthunder

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Monday 26 October 2026 17:54:30 GMT