Jalen Williams will have to wait a little longer before returning to the court for the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n
The All-Star guard\/forward, who played a major role in last season\u2019s championship run, underwent a follow-up procedure this week to remove a screw from his surgically repaired right wrist. The Thunder said the screw was causing irritation as Williams ramped up his activity. He\u2019s expected to be re-evaluated in about 10 to 14 days.<\/p>\n
Both the original surgery in July and this week\u2019s procedure were performed by Dr. Steven Shin at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, with Thunder medical staff on hand. Williams initially tore a ligament in his shooting wrist late last season but continued to play through the injury during Oklahoma City\u2019s playoff push.<\/p>\n
Despite being without Williams, the Thunder have stormed out to a 6-0 start. MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is once again among the league\u2019s scoring leaders, and second-year guard Ajay Mitchell has stepped into a bigger role, averaging 18.5 points per game off the bench.<\/p>\n
Williams, 23, averaged 21.6 points, 5.3 rebounds, 5.1 assists, and 1.6 steals per game last season. He earned All-NBA Third Team and All-Defensive Second Team honors and was electric in the Finals against Indiana, averaging 23.6 points and 5.0 rebounds, including a 40-point performance in Game 5.<\/p>\n
He signed a rookie extension over the summer that includes supermax escalators if he repeats as an All-NBA selection, a goal that will require him to play at least 65 games. Williams will miss at least the first 11 contests of the season before another evaluation determines his next step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jalen Williams will have to wait a little longer before returning to the court for the Oklahoma City…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":349012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[137257,2862,3367,224,1260,1268,3371,62,171109,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-349011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ajay-mitchell","9":"tag-indiana","10":"tag-jalen-williams","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","14":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-steven-shin","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115476954412081841","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}