WASHINGTON — Jalen Williams, the second-most productive player on an Oklahoma City Thunder team currently running away with the Western Conference’s top seed, has told the story of his 2022 NBA Draft workout as it relates to Mark Daigneault, the franchise’s sharp but understated head coach. Daigneault ran it with a command that surprised Williams because, at the time, he thought Daigneault “was a trainer or something.”
On the Thunder side, there was purpose to Daigneault’s inclusion. He isn’t a college scout or on the personnel side, but his voice and on-court eye matter. Sometimes Daigneault sticks in the background during draft workouts. But sometimes general manager Sam Presti prefers he’s in the mix.
“If we have a question on a guy, Sam will tell me to run it,” Daigneault said.
Williams was part of a group of possible late-lottery prospects in 2022. The Thunder had the 11th and 12th selections. Williams had surged onto their radar with a terrific combine. The Thunder was impressed he decided to compete on the second day after excelling the first. Most in his situation might’ve shut it down. Then he went to Oklahoma City and probably sealed his future with the Thunder.
“It was a great group, competitive group,” Daigneault said. “And he killed the workout. He did an unbelievable job. I was trying to test him because there was a confidence to him. You don’t know the person, so it was like trying to test how real the confidence was on the court. And it turns out the confidence was real.”
As much as Presti, Daigneault and the Thunder’s front office warmed to Williams and used their third lottery pick of that draft on him, it’s hard to believe any could’ve predicted an ascension to these heights this rapidly. Only 185 games into his career, Williams has built a legitimate case to make the All-Star team. If he does, Williams will join the Orlando Magic’s Paolo Banchero as the only other player from that 2022 draft class to already check that box.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder’s MVP candidate, is an All-Star lock. Williams — who is second on the team in points and assists, third in rebounds and is a versatile cog in their top-ranked and historically disruptive defense — is their only other true candidate. That might be Williams’ simplest case.
The Thunder, at 33-6, have won 84.6 percent of their games. Their opponent on Thursday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers, at 34-5, have won 87.2 percent of their games. Many expect Cleveland will get two and perhaps as many as three or four All-Stars. Winning matters. No team in NBA history has ever finished the season with a winning percentage at 80 or above and not had multiple All-Stars.
“That’s a great question,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after the Thunder’s recent 41-point win in Washington, grabbing the mic with force when Williams and All-Star were mentioned in the same sentence. “For our team to be as good as we’ve been, obviously coming up on the All-Star Game, I think it’d only be right for him to be an All-Star. You don’t have this record because of one All-Star. You don’t have this record because of one good player.”
Williams slid directly into the Thunder’s rotation as a rookie and looked capable. Williams played 75 games and started 62 for that upstart 44-win OKC team. He averaged 14.6 points on a modest 10.6 shots per game. He made 52 percent of them and chipped in everywhere else. It was obvious they’d found an immediate and emerging 3-and-D role player on the wing.
“At the end of my rookie year, I started having some bigger games,” Williams told The Athletic.
On the night LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Thunder, in a bit of a national arrival in retrospect, beat the Lakers in Los Angeles, and Williams, the rookie, had 25 points and six steals. He had 32 points against the Utah Jazz a month later. He scored 31 and 27 on back-to-back nights in late March.
That’s when Williams began to believe his career could be heading for something bigger. Daigneault also was seeing bigger-picture signs.
“We don’t pump (players) with on-ball stuff early (in their career),” Daigneault said of the Thunder’s disciplined approach. “We just try to put him in a system and see what kind of bubbles to the surface. (As a rookie), he was able to get a lot done without a lot of assistance — the cutting, the spacing, playing on the catch. You could put him on the ball some and he could facilitate. But he just had an ability to get a lot done despite not a lot of help. And usually the really good players are like that.”
Williams took a second-season leap, particularly as a shooter. He made 42.7 percent of his 241 3s. His shot attempts (14 per game) and on-ball duties increased as Josh Giddey’s decreased. They were moving some of the offensive responsibility in his direction. Williams wasn’t a star, but he’d become a solidified starting building block in a winning environment heading toward a mega money extension.
“I mean, I could (keep doing) the same thing that I did last year for the rest of my career,” Williams said. “And if you look back on it, you’ll be like, ‘Yeah, great, you had a good career.’”
But the second round of Williams’ first playoffs delivered the lessons that all NBA players get on the biggest stage: What are your weaknesses? His improving offensive game, as the second scorer next to Gilgeous-Alexander, hadn’t upped to a championship level.
Jalen Williams’ offensive responsibility took a leap last season as the Thunder raced to the West’s No. 1 seed. (Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)
Facing Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving and a long, locked-in Dallas Mavericks defense, Williams averaged 17 points per game on only 42 percent shooting. Dallas crowded Gilgeous-Alexander and vice-gripped the Thunder offense at pivot points of the series. Had Williams been able to go get his shot more easily, maybe that nip-and-tuck result would’ve flipped Oklahoma City’s direction.
“From the losing aspect, yeah,” Williams said when asked if the Mavericks series still gnaws at him. “But it’s also kind of like a little blessing in disguise, too. Because it let’s you know what to work on, what you need to do in the summer and what I need to do in the, you know, like these games right now. What do I need to do to be successful later on? I got upset that we lost. But how do we change that?”
Daigneault also pumped the brakes on the postseason frustration.
“Look, the fact that he was disappointed with his performance in the second round of the playoffs in his first playoff experience is a great place to start,” Daigneault said. “Let’s reframe that. It’s a great thing. But I give him a lot of credit. He worked really hard in the summer on the off-the-dribble 3s and extending his range. He’s done a good job of blending that into his game here. Then as we’ve gotten into the season, we’re really challenging him to be more forceful, and some of that is we’re thinking about the highest-level opponents in the biggest games. I know he is, too.”
Williams and Daigneault have a communicative relationship. Williams said the two have had several bigger-picture conversations about the direction of his career, and it’s clear that both believe — for both individual and team success — his evolution into a bona fide second scorer and playmaker next to one of the league’s best is paramount.
“He’s like: ‘How good do you want to be?’” Williams said. “I want to be a great player. Being around ‘2’ (Gilgeous-Alexander) makes me want to be more of a great player. I think I’m on the right track.”
Per NBA.com’s tracking stats, Williams drove 9.5 times per game as a rookie, 12.6 in his second season and 13.5 in his third. He’s generating more offense for the team, and that’s shown in his growing assist totals: 5.2 per game, up from 3.3 and 4.5.
Or just look at Williams’ touches per game. When he was a rookie, Giddey led the Thunder with 76 touches per game. Gilgeous-Alexander was right behind. Williams only had the basketball 46 times per game on average.
The shift toward Williams began in his second season. Giddey’s touches were reduced to 56 per game, Williams went up to 57 and Gilgeous-Alexander stayed at 71. That’s where Gilgeous-Alexander sits again this season, leading the team at 70.7 per game. His level of usage and control has remained stable. But Giddey is gone and Williams, the leader of the second-unit lineups, is up to 70 per game.
That’s led to a dip in efficiency. His pull-up 3s and 2s have gone up. His overall percentages have gone down. Williams is at 47.8 percent overall and 34.4 percent on 3s heading into Thursday’s rematch with the Cavaliers.
“We are pushing him to evolve,” Daigneault said. “He has been impressively open to that. There’s a great line: ‘Good is the enemy of great.’ I think that happens to a lot of players. They get good and they find success doing something and they just harden that. They lock into that and they stop going through the process that it takes to evolve. He’s countering that right now.”
Williams, meanwhile, has meant a ton to the Thunder on the other end of the floor. Everyone credits him for holding down the interior fort during the early season stretch when Chet Holmgren went out with a fractured hip and Isaiah Hartenstein hadn’t returned from a fractured thumb, leaving the Thunder to play Williams as their starting center.
But that was just a five-game sample. It’s about what Williams does on a daily basis with or without another big next to him.
“The Knicks (win) is a great example,” Daigneault said. “We put him on (Karl-Anthony) Towns. That gets him switching on to (Jalen) Brunson. He could also guard (OG) Anunoby or (Mikal) Bridges, as well. But the ability to put him on a five, if they just post Towns, he’s going to handle it down there. He can also go pressure Brunson, and he does that almost every night for us. … Everybody says you can guard one through five, but he’s doing it every single night.”
Daigneault specifically noted these two weakside blocks from Williams in the win over the New York Knicks, noting the extra layer of rim protection he provides a team, without Holmgren, that needs that element. He’s a defensive chameleon.
Will this all lead to an All-Star appearance? We will see. The West is loaded. Gilgeous-Alexander, Stephen Curry, Dončić, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Nikola Jokić, Victor Wembanyama and Anthony Edwards seem like locks. That’s nine.
Williams will have to fight it out for the final three spots (maybe four, if Dončić is too injured to participate) with Devin Booker, Ja Morant, Kyrie Irving, James Harden, Jaren Jackson Jr., Alperen Şengün, Domantas Sabonis, De’Aaron Fox and Norman Powell. His fate will be decided by rival coaches. The Williams case will have to stretch beyond the statistics. It’ll be about two-way winning impact for one of the league’s rising talents on the conference’s best team.
“You have to have a team, a collective, a second All-Star to help,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “A lot of times I’m out of the game, and he’s carrying the load. He averages 20 a game on hyper efficiency. We are first in the West. Because of that, his case should be sealed. But, hey, that’s just my opinion.”
(Photo of Jalen Williams: Joshua Gateley / Getty Images)
