The Oklahoma City Thunder ruled Jaylin Williams out for Saturday’s Game 7 of the Western Conference finals against the San Antonio Spurs, leaving the 23-year-old forward unavailable again because of a left hamstring injury that has shadowed his postseason. He had tried to give the Thunder something in Game 6, but the team will go into the winner-take-all night without him.
That matters because Williams is not just any rotation piece. He averaged 17.1 points, 4.6 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game in the regular season, then missed stretches of the playoffs that forced Oklahoma City to keep reshuffling around him. The Thunder also were without guard Ajay Mitchell for Game 7, adding another absence to a short-handed group already leaning hard on its depth.
Williams’ season has been interrupted from the start. He missed the Thunder’s first 19 games after offseason wrist surgery, then played only two games between mid-January and late March after injuring his right hamstring. In the playoffs, he sat out the final two games of Oklahoma City’s first-round sweep of the Phoenix Suns, missed the entire second-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers, returned for Game 1 against San Antonio and then reinjured his left hamstring early in Game 2.
He missed Games 3-5 before suiting up in Game 6, when he was on the floor for just 10 minutes and spent much of the rest of the night stretching and getting treatment. Coach Mark Daigneault said Williams did not suffer a setback in that game, but he also acknowledged that Williams had not gone through the normal return-to-play procedure before taking the court. Daigneault described him as a big team player and said the forward had been determined to get himself to this point, even if he was not close to full strength.
The uneasy part for Oklahoma City is that this was not a clean return so much as a calculated gamble in an elimination series. Williams was trying to help before his body was fully ready, and the Thunder still had to plan the final game of the West finals without him. If they win Game 7 and reach the NBA Finals, Williams is expected to keep rehabbing, with his availability still uncertain beyond that point.
