Everything just changed for the Thunder | Jalen Williams injury updates...

Last night the Thunder had their entire season uprooted before our very eyes in an instant with the Jalen Williams injury that rocked our world to its very core and we're going to get answers on exactly the severity of that injury later today a lot faster than the Thunder typically would which as I said last night in our immediate reaction video made entire sense in this moment when you have over 11,000 people in the arena sitting in complete silence you have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of others around the United States and around the world that are left in tears, that are left completely heartbroken and gut-wrenched for a beloved player of this Thunder franchise, Jalen Williams, and his devastatingly horrific left foot and ankle injury that he suffered last night. Well, we're going to get some answers from Sam Presti on this later today, actually. He will address the media at 5 p.m. Central Time, a special press conference that was called to action a little bit ago before the Thunder who do have to play a game tonight will go out there certainly very limited in terms of physicality and in terms of emotions I don't expect a ton from this team here tonight because of what they just had to go through last night and into the night as well I mean you saw how shaken this team was by everything that happened last night Sam Presti is going to go and talk to the media himself and I fully expect a diagnosis from this and the reason I say that is because of the amount of time that they have had now overnight 16 hours where he has been under what I assume to be around the clock care and figuring out what exactly his long-term plan is going to have to be he all that he has done so far publicly is go onto Instagram wipe every one of his posts and make his profile photo black and he put a verse or a quote in his title in his header and here's that quote reading it right now though the righteous fall seven times they rise again this man is devastated and I and all of you watching this I imagine feel the same way if not even more towards him because of everything that he has gone through and this update tonight from Sam Presti is going to tell us a ton about what we can expect from Jalen Williams I think last night you see the horrifying nature of what happens and you assume there is no way this man is coming back here this season and while I would say that remains the most likely outcome we have seen some very drastic timelines on injuries like this a lot of comparisons to the Gordon Hayward injury Gordon Hayward at the time in his mid-30s J-Dub still in his early to mid-20s so you've got a decade's worth of mileage that Hayward had to endure as well, and he missed over a year with his injury that also included a fracture, also included some ligament damage. Paul George, who had his horrific lower leg injury, he only missed nine months, and his was a different injury, but this just goes to show you, though an injury may look horrific, doesn't always mean that they're going to be out for a whole calendar year. Nine months, if it was for J-Dub, that would be pretty much pushing it right to the end of the postseason, So you would say he'd probably be done for the year if the prognosis was seven to nine months. But you've got an instance that happened in the NFL a couple of weeks ago. Tyquan Thornton, he got hip drop tackled against the Raiders. He came up and his foot was sideways and it was completely ripped and dislocated in the way that J-Dub's was. And he had no ligament damage. He had no nerve damage. He had no breaks in his ankle, neither his, you know, anywhere in the, in the area of what happened. And Tyquan Thornton's only out for 10 to 12 weeks. So that's two and a half to three months. obviously two and a half to three months if it's J-Dub, puts you back at the All-Star break so there's a lot of different ways this thing can go and until then I think that we all are just going to continue to wonder what this team can do in his absence because now I mean obviously when you get a team that had to go through something like that and watch it up close and personal to a player to a person that they love so deeply this this strains the Thunder's mental and emotional well-being, and it also strains how this team is going to be able to play in his absence. I mean, this changes the team's outlook significantly. Obviously, when you consider what J-Dub is at his very best, which we didn't get to see last year, we saw it more in 2024. This is what he did in the title year. I mean, obviously, the dude was a third-team All-NBA player. And he felt better than he had since that season before his wrist injury coming into the year. And there is not a single thing this man could have done in his rehab, getting ready for the season, getting rid of the strains that he's had on his legs. There is nothing that this man could have done to prevent what happened last night. The only thing that could have prevented it was Chris Dunn not being a complete loser and shoving J-Dub while he's in midair, sending him flying out of control in a way that absolutely he could not have controlled at all what happened. And we actually got a lot of support around the NBA last night, which this league, they have so much toxicity in it. I think you see which people are really human beings when an injury like this happens, that band together. And I'm talking about all the burner accounts, all the idiots that are out there on social media. Obviously, the players are going to all go to bat for each other. Tyrese Haliburton sending out a tweet like this last night. Paolo Bancaro doing the same thing. also saw Alperen Sengun do something like that as well. The Thunder are gonna play the Rockets here later on this week, but we nearly had something that was a little bit of a glimmer of good news today as originally it was reported. I'll pull up the tweet for you guys, actually. This is the tweet that went live about an hour ago. Nikola Topić and Thomas Sorber are available to play tonight versus the Suns, and I'm sitting there, okay, we're gonna make all sorts of content on, even with all of this stuff going on, Thomas Sorber's gonna be ready to finally play, and then we get that ripped away too when Rabar says hey update there was an error on the Thunder injury report Thomas Sorber and Nikola Topić are still out so so much for that kind of debut coming in here to maybe try and up the vibes at all but you're obviously with the shockwaves you're losing much more than just a player you're leaving an irreplaceable hole on the Thunder season skill set leadership talent versatility all the things an x-factor to a title is not able to play And so now the immediate challenge for this team is how do you continue on in his absence? J-Dub's left leg injury, Kaysen's left shoulder soreness, which there may be an encouraging diagnosis on that. He wasn't given a long timeline still as of yet. J-Dub's was listed as a lower leg injury. Cason's still today listed as shoulder soreness. Chad Holmgren is out tonight with some slight knee, like tendonitis type of stuff. So he's going to be day to day. That's not anything significant. J Will who left with a right right wrist injury last night he is back here tonight as well so the Thunder just going to be without those rookies you're going to be without Chet you're going to be without J-Dub, you're going to be without Cason and that is a big problem for this team from a depth standpoint all of these guys I mean the emotional void the established depth that is much less than what it has been during this title window how on earth do the Thunder survive this and that is going to be the toughest question of them all to answer and the way we're going to wrap up today's video obviously all of your familiar depth is now gone right you trade away Aaron Wiggins for salary cap reasons you trade away Isaiah Joe for the same thing and then in mid July you trade away Lou Dort the final and most tough piece to trade of that whole puzzle Lou Dort getting sent to Atlanta those three guys would have been ones that could have stepped in and made this feel a little bit more palatable nothing's going to replace the void that you have in J-Dub's absence now but you would have players that are established in this system you know what you're going to get from them that can step in and try to help shoulder that load but now those established pieces that safety net is gone right the proven identities of those three players are in different places now so what you have now is this need for players to come in and help out a team that you don't fully know what they're going to do with with this test and this is a bigger test than anyone should have to shoulder and this is a test that goes right on to everyone in this team including Mark Daigneault including Sam Presti including all the staff and the personnel I mean J-Dub out long term Cason out for at least a short term this lineup is going to have to change a lot AJ Mitchell now 100% going to be a starter Alex Caruso going to likely become a starter as well in Cason Wallace and J-Dub's absence. You'd imagine Caruso will slot in in J-Dub's spot, and you're going to get Jared McCain, who's going to become a sixth man. You've got J-Will coming immediately right off the bench as well, and everything else from this, I mean, it's going to create more need for these guys to step up. You're going to need more creation from A.J. Mitchell. He's not going to be on the bench, by the way. I don't know. I accidentally typed that in. He's going to need to be in the starting lineup. Caruso is going to have to give you more when he is out there, especially Chet Holmgren, who is out tonight. So it's going to be Shea basically in a solo squads in terms of superstardom on this team. Shea is without the two other pieces of his big three. When Chet is back and he is playing, Chet is going to have to give you more offensively. He is going to have to be a more, a more, I don't know how, a more consistent creator, we'll say. His aggressiveness against other teams has been pretty, pretty well thought out he needs to just be more and that's what everyone is going to have to do Jared McCain you're going to need to see games from him like what we saw against San Antonio in game one and like what he was able to give you off the bench in his minutes with OKC last year you're going to have to see it from AJ Mitchell who had a good game against the Clippers yesterday and 18 points and 8 of 14 from the field AJ Mitchell is going to be a big one that's going to have to step up and then obviously the videos that are coming up here in the next couple of days we're going to talk about how exactly this team might try to go about its business because there is an outlet that goes where the Thunder go out and they make a trade I think that first all of this is going to depend entirely on what happens today with this press conference from Sam Presti which is happening basically two and a half hours from when this video is going out who's going to cover the gaps do you think it's going to be more McCain do you see it be more Caruso and AJ or Kenny Hustle Do you like Ajayi Mara and Ben Satoransky, rookies who now suddenly are going to need way more minutes than what they maybe were even anticipated to? And so we'll have all the immediate updates on this press conference from Sam Presti. We'll let you know exactly what we get on the whole Jalen Williams injury front. We'll let you know anything he says about Thomas Sorber and why he's continuing to not play, how the Thunder are going to support J-Dub the whole time of his injury, the timeline, any thoughts of exploring the trade market and the injured player exception they may have I want you guys to let me know down below how you're feeling about this update here today what do you expect to hear from Sam Presti what do you want to see from the guys that are going to play how much are you going to be paying attention to this game in the next couple of weeks and if you are interested in all those updates again we're going to have them all for you right here on the channel so go subscribe down below we've really been crushing it as of late we are at 10,600 subscribers now we've gained over 100 in the last day or two and obviously this is going to be the place where you're going to get all your updates so go subscribe down below to get more on the injury front on all the updates this team could ever need we'll see you guys later here on Thunder Digest