Oklahoma City Thunder coach Mark Daigneault has a favorite descriptor for his team.
“Uncommon.”
It rings true in several ways. The Thunder won the NBA Championship last season at an uncommon, very young age. Its rise to the top happened in just three seasons, and it suffered just one playoff loss before winning the title. It plays with a physically dominant style in a league that many fans, incorrectly in most ways, say is the softest generation of professional basketball.
But above all else, it has uncommon players.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gets the love, and rightfully so. He’s an MVP, has a legitimate case to be tabbed the best player in the world at a time when the most unstoppable offensive engine in the history of basketball plays in Denver.
Gilgeous-Alexander is great, everybody knows it, but his emerging co-star, a superstar in his own right, is the most uncommon thing on a team packed to the gills with outliers and oddities.
Jalen Williams has always been unique. He’s a 6-foot-6 guard with the physical force of a power forward and the wingspan of a center.
Those don’t grow on trees.
Last season, he took several leaps. Namely, becoming a focal point on the NBA Champs.
“Every number one needs a number two, every Batman needs a Robin,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after Game 7 last season. “Especially after last year, the world thought he couldn’t achieve what he’s achieved.”
Williams got the superstar stamp from Gilgeous-Alexander on the biggest stage, but to those who were watching all of last season, Williams already had certified star status.
He was a first-time all-star. He made All-NBA Third Team, an All-NBA Defensive Team, and was recently voted as the league’s 11th-best player by an ESPN panel of more than 150 voters. His growth culminated on the biggest stage when he scored 40 points in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, all while having a serious wrist injury that kept Hornets forward Brandon Miller, who suffered a similar issue, out for most of the season.
The accolades will stand out to most. At 24, on his rookie contract, Williams ascended and is nearing superstar territory by every statistical measure. But where he is truly uncommon, as Daigneault would put it, is in the areas that most won’t pay attention to. The areas that those who only watched OKC in the playoffs can’t truly appreciate.
“He really unlocks what we can do out there,” Daigneault said. “Both schematically and with lineups.”
A perfect example of this was during a November 13 game against the lowly New Orleans Pelicans.
Keep in mind, Williams is just 6-6, possibly 6-4 if you ask Gilgeous-Alexander (those who get that one, get that one).
He was playing center.
It was the middle of the third quarter with OKC’s lead sitting at 12 points. Pelicans forward Javonte Green ran a pick-and-roll with Brandon Ingram that freed him. Ingram saw him and dished it to Green. With a wide open lane to the rim, Green quickly went up for the layup. Just then, Williams, who was camped in the dunkers’ spot guarding Yves Missi, came over and rejected Green’s attempt.
A solid play on its own.
But Lu Dort, Green’s original defender, had assumed a switch and popped to the corner to guard Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, leaving the offensive rebound for Green. He secured it and went back up, only for Williams to again reject the shot. This time into the hands of Gilgeous-Alexander.
As Gilgeous-Alexander advanced the ball in the fast-but-slow way that only he can, Williams sprinted full-speed, finding a hole in the Pelican defense, got the ball back and went to the rim, where he was fouled.
Having a player that any NBA team would be comfortable paying a max to do that once would be great, but that was the biggest leap Williams took. It wasn’t once — it was every game.
A poke-check steal here, a jumped passing lane there and an emphatic rejection from the wing when he wasn’t doing those. Williams had gone from a solid defender with potential to a defensive annihilator, on a team with the basketball version of a linebacker in Dort, a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate in Chet Holmgren, and several other all-world defenders surrounding him.
“The longer you’re in the NBA and you apply yourself to defense the way I have, you start to pick up little tricks,” Williams said. “You start to really understand it. And I’ve been lucky enough to be in the same system for three years where, like, I kind of know the tendencies.”
The NBA is in a place as a league where there is an established tradition, and every player is compared to those before him, whether that’s in terms of statistics, play style or accolades.
The jump from Gilgeous-Alexander to Kobe Bryant isn’t tough to make. The smoothness, the midrange marksmanship, the ability to get to the line and the above-average defense make it an apt comparison as long as the person you’re making it to hasn’t already made up their mind on what Gilgeous-Alexander is to them as a player.
But for the longest time, Williams was without a comparison.
He’s the size of a guard, he’s the best passer on OKC’s roster, he was a burgeoning defensive stalwart, and, in many cases, he’d play center for the Thunder.
But as the playoffs went on and the positional experimentation that Daigneault loves faded, those around the country found a historical parallel, oddly enough, one that played with the comparison of Gilgeous-Alexander’s comparison.
“There are people in this league who believe Jalen Williams can have a Scottie Pippen-like career,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said on Get Up! before Game 5 of the NBA Finals. “He’s doing it on both ends.”
Few are saying Williams is Pippen, just like few are saying Gilgeous-Alexander is Kobe, but the comparisons make sense.
Williams, like Pippen, was a point guard for most of his pre-NBA career, giving both of them unique passing ability for players at their size. Eerily enough, Pippen averaged 4.3 assists in his final year of college, while Williams averaged 4.2. Pippen had a 7-3 wingspan, Williams’ is 7-2. Williams is officially listed at 6-6, while Pippen was listed between 6-7 and 6-8.
The statistical and physical comparison is an easy one to make; even Pippen sees what those NBA staffers that Windhorst spoke to were talking about.
“He is pretty special,” Pippen said. “I’m enjoying watching him. I see a lot of me in him for sure. I see a guy rising to be one of the top players in this league. He’s definitely a player that is capable of being able to lead that franchise to multiple championships — him and Shai, of course.”
Pippen went on to say he thinks Williams will become a better player than he was, noting his three-point shooting and the increased offensive freedom that Williams has that Pippen never did due to playing in the Triangle Offense during his prime.
Becoming a peer of Pippen is a tall ask for someone who just had his first All-NBA nod, but somehow, it doesn’t seem outlandish. Williams’ meteoric rise to relevance after being considered a long shot to be drafted just four years ago tells the story better than any words ever could.
His offensive game is blossoming, but where he is unlike anyone else is on the defensive end, where, like Pippen, he has a chance to be one of the all-timers on that end of the floor, especially amongst all-stars.
He led the NBA in defensive rating a year ago and passed the eye test with flourishing colors. Suppose you look at the 10 players ahead of him on ESPN’s list. In that case, only two of them can argue for being better than Williams on the defensive end: Victor Wembenyama, who is tracking to be the most destructive defensive force in NBA history, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is a former Defensive Player of the Year. Both are also over 7-feet, while Williams is a guard in most systems.
No one can tell what Williams will become because if two seasons ago someone would’ve said he was going to be scratching at the door of becoming a top-10 player, few would have believed them.
The sky is the limit for OKC and Williams, and while a comparison to a lite version of Jordan and Pippen sounds ridiculous, Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams have leaned into it. With a title in their back pocket, an elite coaching staff and front office and a team set up to sustain for the next half-decade, what’s to stop Williams and Gilgeous-Alexander from becoming this generation’s version of the legendary duo?
Certainly not Williams’ defense.
“I feel like a new-age Scottie maybe,” Williams told ESPN. “I’m not mad at that one at all. I like that. And then obviously Shai gets a little Jordan comparison, so that’s cool. It’s very cool. Any time you (are) compared to somebody like that, you’re doing something right.”
Excellent story!