Jalen Williams’ new role emerged without any warning.
Williams, a broad-shouldered, 6-foot-5 freight engine, has defended larger players for years, but no one ever tagged him with the label to match. Until recently, the 20-point scorer appeared as your typical small forward. Three weeks ago, outside forces decided he would no longer be one.
Earlier this month, the Oklahoma City Thunder lost one 7-footer, Chet Holmgren, to a pelvic fracture. Another, Isaiah Hartenstein, was already sidelined. Without any conventional big men, they replaced Holmgren in the first unit with the 6-foot-5 Isaiah Joe. That meant an adjustment for Williams, the team’s new final line of defense.
Williams would battle with the opposition’s centers each night. He would line up at center circle to take jump balls at the beginnings of games. Each leap was a little surprise, a reminder that a lifelong perimeter player was now down low with the big boys.
“I’m gonna be shocked tonight when I do it,” Williams joked last week leading into a game in San Antonio, where he defended Spurs 7-footer Zach Collins. Only two nights earlier, he had scrapped with a couple of mammoths in Dallas, Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II.
In reality, the Thunder’s do-everything man could not have been so shocked, even if Williams’ size deviates from your usual center archetype. Thunder coach Mark Daigneault never actually told Williams — or any of his teammates, for that matter — that he would be the one to take jump balls. It was “assumed,” as Daigneault put it.
“Who else is gonna do it?” the coach said.
And who else would be the team’s center for the six games that neither Holmgrem nor Hartenstein could start?
The Thunder have trusted Williams to guard bigs since long before injuries forced them into it. He’s defended brawny scorers such as Giannis Antetokounmpo and Zion Williamson or towers like Victor Wembanyama and Karl-Anthony Towns. Even when Holmgren was healthy, Oklahoma City would occasionally throw its shot-blocker on a non-shooter so he could roam as a free safety with Williams defending the other team’s center. Before Holmgren was in the picture, when the Thunder deployed a tinier roster and a trio of not-so-imposing fives, a rookie Williams had to slide down a position or two.
“I just tried to make (guarding big men) a skill, add something else to my game,” Williams said. “I feel like I do damn near everything well on the court. So in my mind, it was just one of those things. Like, why wouldn’t I be able to do it? And I just kinda keep getting the opportunity to do it.”
But this situation was new — 48 minutes of guarding centers up for grabs with no help from any giants in sight, a Williams fever dream.
As the wise philosopher Aaron Wiggins, who moonlights as a Thunder forward, put it, “Tonight, he’s a center. Tomorrow, who knows what he’ll be?”
Such is the way to survive in Oklahoma. No team and no defense can shapeshift like the Thunder. Just like Williams, OKC’s identity is that it has many.
Daigneault will flip through starting units or substitution patterns regularly. He’s tried 188 lineups so far this season, sixth most in the NBA. The teams ahead of the Thunder in that category are injury-ravaged ones, such as the Philadelphia 76ers or New Orleans Pelicans, who have tossed out desperation combinations only because their top guys haven’t been able to play. On one day, the Thunder will go small. On the next, they’ll grow oversized. They toggle in and out of a zone defense or they switch with their assembly of multifaceted defenders or they move to other types of coverages.
With the centers present, they have at least one deterrent in the paint, someone to scare away any dribbler who dares approach the basket. They line the perimeter with ravenous guards and wings. They gobble up steals like the basketball is doused in gravy. Without either of the bigs, they are a cloud of gnats.
Now, Hartenstein’s fractured hand has healed. Oklahoma City’s biggest free-agent signing from this past summer entered the starting lineup this week and just played his third game of the season on Wednesday, when the Western Conference-best Thunder downed the Golden State Warriors, 105-101. Williams departed the game early after an inadvertent poke to the eye. Holmgren, a beanstalk rim protector who will be out at least another five to seven weeks, has already missed eight games. Hartenstein, whose analytics graded him as one of the world’s most daunting paint defenders last season, has missed 15.
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The Thunder still lead the league in points allowed per possession. They force more turnovers than anyone. The trend has remained true with or without a top-notch shot-blocker: This team, which is now 14-4, doesn’t defend quite like any other — especially when Williams runs at center, which Daigneault calls “a muscle that if we do it effectively, which we’ve done to this point, will help us in the future.”
When the Thunder go small, all eyes focus on the paint. Williams mans a center. Fellow energizer Luguentz Dort will take on the other team’s highest-usage perimeter player. Other stalwarts line the outside. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a master in passing lanes and has become one of the league’s better shot-blocking guards. Alex Caruso is a hound, as are Wiggins and Cason Wallace. Their goal is to make any ballhandler or screener uncomfortable. Daigneault talks about “rhythm.” The defense’s job is to break the offense’s.
Caruso will stunt at a dribbler, then recover back onto his man. When drivers reach the free-throw line, he has an uncanny ability to step toward them and swipe the basketball away. Williams and Dort do the same.
“Sometimes, it’s not even about stealing it,” Williams said. “It’s just about making somebody think you might steal it.”
The Thunder are lurking.
Once the ball hits the paint, arms swarm down low. They will send aggressive help from the weak side, sometimes the strong side, wherever they need. They will give up corner 3s when they’re small, but they won’t make any shot easy.
“Everybody is in there and fighting,” Dort said. “That’s all we can ask for.”
Without Holmgren or Hartenstein on the court this season, the Thunder force turnovers on 21 percent of their defensive possessions, a rate that would rank No. 1 in the league by far if it belonged to a team for the season, according to Cleaning the Glass. And here’s another surprise for Williams, one even greater than the six jump balls he’s lined up for this season: Their defensive rim efficiency (the points they allow per shot at the rim) when neither Holmgren nor Hartenstein is on the court would be the NBA’s eighth-best, according to Second Spectrum.
To keep it simple: The Thunder, even without their rim protectors, protect the rim better than most.
“The beginning of the play, if the (ballhandler) is under duress, it changes the rhythm of the play. They’re not getting into their steps in a rhythmic way,” Daigneault said. “And then it’s just competitiveness at the rim.”
On Monday, Hartenstein entered the starting lineup for the first time. He’s been an immediate hit, reaching a double-double in all three of his games so far. The Thunder now have a conventional center, which slides Williams to a more run-of-the-mill role, one to be expected from a hyper-efficient, scoring and facilitating wing who wouldn’t normally exhaust himself wrestling people nearly a foot taller.
Once Holmgren returns (and the Thunder say he will be back before the end of the season), Oklahoma City can pair the two centers together. Both wall off the paint. Holmgren shoots 3s and attacks closeouts off the dribble. Hartenstein is an expert screen-setter, passer and roller. They could operate alongside each other, especially for short stretches. In those moments, especially if the bash brothers of Dort and Williams are out there and if the stringy Gilgeous-Alexander joins too, the Thunder will be massive.
Of course, that won’t change who they are — because their identity is that they play however the situation dictates they should.
Required Reading
(Top photo of Kyrie Irving and Jalen Williams: Joshua Gateley / Getty Images)
