Thunder secure a commanding 2-0 lead, but a star player's hamstring injury casts a shadow over their playoff triumph.
The Oklahoma City Thunder avoided the plague of home favorites losing Game 2 in the opening round of the NBA Playoffs. And yet OKC fans cannot fully enjoy their team being up 2-0 on the Phoenix Suns.
That's because Jalen Williams, the All-NBA/All-Star/All-Defense jack of all trades guard/forward, left the 120-107 victory early with a left hamstring injury.
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault opened his postgame press conference with an update on Williams.
“We think he aggravated his left hamstring," Daigneault said before he took any questions in his media availability. "We’ll take a look at him here over the next couple days. And we'll update you guys appropriately."
Williams missed significant time during the regular season due to a right hamstring strain. He returned to the court and unfortunately tweaked the same injury and was forced to miss more time. Those two injuries combined with the recovery from the surgery on his torn shooting wrist in the offseason have made it a challenging season filled with comebacks and setbacks for the Thunder fan favorite.
As OKC fans anxiously await an update, most are probably googling the recovery times for the different grades of hamstring strains. Followed shortly by googling the start dates for the Western Conference Semifinals and the Western Conference Finals. For those who haven't done so yet, I'll save you the time.
Hamstring Tightness: Day to day.
Grade I Hamstring Strain: 1-2 weeks.
Grade II Hamstring Strain: 3-6 weeks.
Western Conference Semifinals start date: May 4.
Western Conference Finals start date: May 20.
The hope is that the injury Williams sustained will be deemed hamstring tightness or, at worst, a Grade I strain. That timeline would put his return somewhere between Round 1 of the playoffs to the early part of Round 2. One caveat is that the starting dates for Round 2 and Round 3 could each move up a couple days depending on the length of the previous series. In other words, OKC fans should root for the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets to go to 7 games.
If Williams does miss some time, the Thunder should be able to handle business being up 2-0 against the Suns. In Round 2, the Rockets offense would likely be overwhelmed by OKC's point of attack defense and struggle to score. The one concern for the next round in the minds of Thunder fans may be the possibility of playing the Lakers without Williams while Los Angeles gets Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves back healthy.
But that's a lot of if's. The extent of Williams' injury, OKC's potential 2nd round opponent and the health of future opponents are all unknown at this point. The only thing we know is that the Thunder are up 2-0.
And while that may not cheer up any rightfully worried Oklahoma City fans, it's more than any other Top 3 seed in the NBA can say.