There are going to be plenty of questions about the Oklahoma City Thunder this season. The lineup looks different, some players will have bigger roles and there will be plenty of figuring things out along the way.
Jalen Williams though, doesn't seem too concerned with having all the answers right now.
In fact, he'd rather the Thunder figure it out as they go.
Asked at Media Day what he was most looking forward to with the new-look lineup and how he planned to contribute, Williams didn't talk about a specific role or a certain number of shots. He didn't try to predict which lineups would work best.
He kept it simple.
“I'm just doing me as far as like contributing goes. When you try and get too specific about where guys need to be or what he brings to the table, it moves away the basketball aspect of it. You kind of want to go out there and not know what guys are going to do for the first part of the season. So you get to learn each other. That's how you become a team. That's how you mesh.”
That probably says a lot about where the Thunder are right now.
This isn't a team that needs to walk into training camp believing they already know exactly what it is. There are new pieces, different combinations and players who are going to be asked to do things they haven't necessarily done before.
Some of it will work right away. Some of it won't.
And that's okay.
Williams seems to understand that the only real way to find the right combinations is to actually play together and see what happens. You can draw up lineups on a whiteboard and talk about roles all you want, but eventually the players have to get on the floor and learn each other.
That's the part Williams is looking forward to.
“But yeah, I'm just excited to see what lineups that get thrown out there and how we adjust,” he said.
Adjustment is going to be a big part of the Thunder's season. Every NBA team deals with injuries, bad stretches, difficult matchups and nights when something simply isn't working. The difference is how quickly a team can recognize it and respond.
Williams believes that's what separates good teams from great ones.
“I think what makes teams really good is, one, adjustments you make, and just like the response to adversity.”
It's a simple point, but one that could matter quite a bit for Oklahoma City. The Thunder are going to have expectations on them this season. They're no longer the young team that can simply surprise people. There will be nights when opponents come into the building specifically looking to take away what Oklahoma City does best.
There will also be nights when the Thunder have to figure out things for themselves.
Williams knows there will be ups and downs saying,
“Like we are going to have so many ups and downs during the year, it's like how can we remain steady through all that.”
That might be the biggest challenge for this team.
Not avoiding the bad nights. Not expecting every new lineup to work immediately. Not trying to force every player into a specific role before the season has even started.
Just staying steady.
For Williams, that's part of what makes this new version of the Thunder exciting. There is still plenty that hasn't been figured out, and instead of seeing that as a problem, he sees it as an opportunity.
“And that's what I'm most excited about with this team.”
The Thunder don't know exactly what every lineup will look like yet. They don't know which combinations will eventually become their go-to groups. They don't know which player might emerge when the team needs something unexpected.
But they don't need to know yet. They have a season to figure it out.
And Williams seems perfectly comfortable letting the team become what it is supposed to become, rather than deciding what it has to be before it ever gets there.
