Sam Presti impressed with Jalen Williams gutting out wrist injury through playoffs

USA Today

a day ago

During your average morning shootaround, Jalen Williams had a quote that stuck with my mind. Hiding the wrapping on his wrist, the 24-year-old was asked how it felt. He sports black tape on it throughout the playoffs. It was pretty obvious he was playing through some sorta ailment.
Williams snipped back at the reporter. He asked how their wrist was. That also stuck out to Sam Presti. Given several chances to admit that he played through a torn ligament in his wrist throughout the Oklahoma City Thunder's playoff journey to an NBA championship, he kept quiet.
Only after champagne was popped and confetti littered downtown OKC in the post-parade scene did Presti let the public know about Williams' wrist injury. You knew something was up. He yelled at his shooting hand after he hit a big-time 3-pointer in a critical Game 5 win over the Denver Nuggets in their Round 2 series victory.
Despite having the injury card in his hand, Williams never slammed it on the table. He kept it a secret. Or as secretive as he possibly could. That impressed Presti. Usually, if somebody is playing hurt, you'd hear about it. Ask Luka Doncic's superfans. Or Nuggets fans who'll let you know they were the first injured team in NBA history that didn't have anybody miss a game in their playoff matchup against OKC.
"But the part that I am 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 said about Williams. "Never happened with this guy. Not one time."
Williams wrote himself into Thunder lore. He entered the playoffs as a questionable second-best player on a title contender to a no-doubt good-enough second-best player on a title winner. A 40-point Game 5 explosion in the NBA Finals quickly blossomed into Gen Z Scottie Pippen comparisons.
"He powered through. He showed incredible mental endurance and security in himself, and I've said this many times: The best players are secure players," Presti said. "I really thought it was pretty impressive that he just kept moving along with no excuses and obviously played his best basketball down the stretch of the season."
Now, Williams is in line for a Cloud 9 offseason. He'll likely get a new deal signed soon, as he's eligible for a contract extension. He completely rewrote how people talk about him. And now he can run as many online victory laps as he wants while he recovers from wrist surgery and awaits his championship ring.