Their record is unbeaten. Their roster is battered. Can the Thunder still contend for an NBA title despite injuries?
The Oklahoma City Thunder’s win on opening night of the new NBA season was a reminder of everything that makes the league’s 2025 champion a prime contender to win again.Barely one week later, those aspirations have already been damaged.Thunder star Jalen Williams, the team’s second-leading scorer and best all-around defender during its title run two seasons ago, fractured a fibula and dislocated his left ankle in a gruesome injury Sunday.
The same night, Cason Wallace, a hounding defender and accurate shooter in his own right, tore the labrum in his shoulder.Thunder general manager Sam Presti didn’t specify how long both will miss, but they are expected to miss months, at a minimum, putting their availability for any playoff run — especially a deep one — in serious doubt.
Jeff Stotts, an athletic trainer who runs a site that tracks sports injuries, wrote that since 2005, just one player had sustained a torn labrum like Wallace’s and returned later that season.“We’ll get them back, we’ll get them healthy, but we got a lot of basketball to play in front of us,” Presti said Monday.“We got to put it together, figure out what the next steps are, because this is part of the business that we’re in.”Getting Williams back healthy had been central to Oklahoma City’s goal of returning to the NBA Finals.
Injuries sidelined Williams for more than half of last season, and he also missed time during last season’s Western Conference finals, which the Thunder lost in seven games to San Antonio.When San Antonio and Oklahoma City met on opening night, with Oklahoma City winning on the road, it was widely seen as a preview of the spring, when the two teams with loaded rosters featuring superstars still in their 20s were expected again to face off for the right to make the Finals.“It’s obviously going to be tough without a player” like Williams, Thunder guard and two-time league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said.
“But he’s not gone forever.H...