Earlier this season, the Oklahoma City Thunder lost one 7-footer, Chet Holmgren, to a pelvic fracture. Another, Isaiah Hartenstein, was already sidelined. Without any conventional big men, they replaced Holmgren in the first unit with the 6-foot-5 Isaiah Joe. That meant an adjustment for Jalen Williams, the team’s new final line of defense.
Williams, a broad-shouldered, 6-foot-5 freight engine, would battle with the opposition’s centers each night. He would line up at center circle to take jump balls at the beginnings of games. Each leap was a little surprise, a reminder that a lifelong perimeter player was now down low with the big boys.
“I’m gonna be shocked tonight when I do it,” Williams joked last week leading into a game in San Antonio, where he defended Spurs 7-footer Zach Collins. Only two nights earlier, he had scrapped with a couple of mammoths in Dallas, Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II.
In reality, the Thunder’s do-everything man could not have been so shocked, even if Williams’ size deviates from your usual center archetype. Thunder coach Mark Daigneault never actually told Williams — or any of his teammates, for that matter — that he would be the one to take jump balls. It was “assumed,” as Daigneault put it.
“Who else is gonna do it?” the coach said.
This situation was new — 48 minutes of guarding centers up for grabs with no help from any giants in sight, a Williams fever dream.
As the wise philosopher Aaron Wiggins, who moonlights as a Thunder forward, put it, “Tonight, he’s a center. Tomorrow, who knows what he’ll be?”
Such is the way to survive in Oklahoma. No team and no defense can shapeshift like the Thunder. Just like Williams, OKC’s identity is that it has many.
Read my Nov. 28 story here.
GO FURTHER
What the Thunder learned playing without centers, and why they’re now even more dangerous
