Jalen Williams Calls Injury 'Blessing in Disguise'

Oklahoma City is four days into training camp with a roster that retains 99% of its championship team from a year ago. There aren't many fresh faces but there is still plenty of changes with a young core still developing as the Thunder have the sixth youngest roster in the league.

One of those young stars is Jalen Williams, who has already been the No. 2 scorer on a title team, third team All-NBA, on the All-Defensive team and an All-Star in his career. This summer, Williams has been rehabbing a wrist injury, electing to wait until after the postseason to get surgery on torn ligaments in his wrist.

This has been a process that the Santa Clara product has been asked about multiple times this week which he called a blessing in disguise.

"I'm always able to work out and do that whole thing. I think it was a good like blessing in disguise, though. It allowed me more to take care of my body and like not go full throttle. With the short offseason it's kind of hard to like manage how much you want to work out. So it actually made me take a break which was nice," Williams explained. "But yeah, I got my work in, for sure. Still got some ways to go with it, for sure. But yeah, I got work in. It forced me to be really creative, me and my trainers who I had in my camp. It's hard to do the same drills over and over again especially when you're in a cast. So we got pretty creative as the summer progressed."

While no one should expect the swingman to take left handed jumpers throughout this season he could be even better going left after this summer. If his handle with his left is cleaner and his ability to get downhill grows stronger it could lead to easier buckets and more trips to the free throw line which has to be more apart of his game this season.

It has been a summer of creative work for the All-Star, the Thunder swingman can continue to evolve as a player as the 2025-26 campaign marches on. For Oklahoma City to repeat as champions, of course, the Santa Clara product will need to play a massive role in that - as he did a year ago.

This will be an interesting season in Bricktown, stay tuned to Thunder on SI all season long for complete coverage of the defending champs.