Jalen Williams’s Wrist Injury Could Save the Thunder Millions

Jalen Williams’s absence hasn’t been fully felt by the Thunder, who have started their title defense with a 15–1 record, an NBA-best. 

Williams hasn’t played all season after undergoing offseason wrist surgery to repair a fully torn scapholunate ligament in his right wrist, which he played with throughout Oklahoma City’s championship run. He had follow-up surgery on the wrist in late October to remove a screw that was bothering him during the rehab process. 

But Williams’s time off the floor has already saved the Thunder money for next season. 

In July, Williams signed a five-year rookie max extension with the Thunder that could pay as much as $287 million if he maximized the incentives attached to it, such as being named All-NBA and All Star. But Williams isn’t expected to play in Friday’s game against the Jazz, which means he would have to play in every remaining regular-season game to reach the 65–game threshold to qualify for league awards. Given Williams’s extensive time off, he is  extremely unlikely to do so in the NBA era of load management.  

Williams will make $6.5 million this season in the final year of his rookie deal, and his new deal will pay him $41.5 million next season, according to Spotrac. The July extension came with escalators if he repeated an All-NBA selection, or was named MVP, Defensive Player of the Year. Triggering the supermax escalators would have increased Williams’s 2026–27 salary by more than $8 million to almost $50 million. The bump would have been similar to the raise Evan Mobley got in May when he was named Defensive Player of the Year, which increased his salary this season by roughly $8 million. 

A year ago, Williams was named All-NBA Third Team and All-Defensive Second Team in addition to an All Star nod after averaging a career best 21.6 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game. He faced an uphill battle to be named first team All-NBA, but had a more realistic path to being named second or third team, which would have come with their own respective bumps, albeit smaller ones. Williams’s extension starts at 25% of the cap and second or third-team honors would have ticked his salary up by a percent or two, which amounts to $3 million or $1.5 million, respectively. 

But Thunder GM Sam Presti built the team in a way that Williams’s savings are a luxury and not a necessity despite playing in one of the NBA’s smallest markets. 

The Thunder have more than $822 million committed to the trio of Williams, Chet Holmgren, and reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but won’t be a luxury tax team this season. Next year, the team’s salary is projected to be $246 million, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, which will take them from out of the tax this season to over the dreaded second apron. 

Yet Presti is armed with $77 million in non-guarenteed contracts and a war chest of draft picks to reshape the roster around the team’s core without an extended stay in the second apron. Teams in that threshold are limited in their ability to sign players and make trades, and being in the second apron three out of five years drops a team’s first-round pick to 30th regardless of record. 

While the Thunder await Williams to make his season debut, he continues to help the team in a unique way: saving the Thunder money a year before it will carry its most expensive payroll in its history.