Only four games into the 2026-27 regular season and you could argue the Oklahoma City Thunder have seen their title hopes dashed already. Sam Presti delivered the catastrophic news that Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace will be out for most — if not all — of the year.
The Thunder will be without two of their four best players. And two sure-fire starters. That completely shakes things up for the worse. Now, the NBA has a wide-open title hunt. Both Williams and Wallace sustained their (basically) season-ending injuries in their win over the LA Clippers.
Wallace had a torn labrum that he suffered in the first quarter. He tried to go over Isaiah Jackson's screen. And then Williams had the more gruesome-looking injury. With about a minute to go in regulation,
he went up for a driving layup. Kris Dunn collided with him mid-air. He landed badly as his left leg snapped underneath him. Unsurprisingly, he was diagnosed with a fractured fibula and a dislocated ankle.
While talking about Williams and Wallace, Presti also mentioned another recent Thunder player who had a season-ender — Otega Oweh. In a preseason win over the Indiana Pacers, he sustained a torn Achilles tendon. They eventually waived him to open up a two-way spot for Micah Peavy.
Despite Oweh being cut, Presti revealed they're keeping an eye on his lengthy rehab. He didn't outright say it, but it sounds like he'll be signed to the G League's OKC Blue so that he can stick around the organization.
"We never want to use a human-to-human touch. You can talk about the business or the finances or the data or whatever you want to, analytics," Presti said. "But at the end of the day, it's people, and people go through things. They remember how you make them feel. We're not perfect at that, but we try to be direct and try to be honest and shoot everybody straight that's in that situation. That's what I tried to do with him."
The Thunder added Oweh with the No. 41 pick of the 2026 NBA draft. But before he even logged a single serious minute in the NBA, he suffered this big-time setback. Returning from a torn Achilles tendon has been an easier task in recent years, but it'll be interesting to see how he looks. He was already fighting an uphill battle to carve out an NBA career.
Let's see if Oweh can return revitalized next offseason. Surely, the Thunder will give him an honest shot at regaining his two-way spot. But if he lost even a little bit of his zap from his athleticism, then an NBA path might unfortunately not be there. That's a problem for another day, though.
"That's another guy that I can't believe his mindset. For a younger person like that, pretty remarkable. I'm pretty confident he's going to be fine," Presti said. "But yeah, we'll do everything we can to help him as he gets through this. It's a long road."
This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: OKC Thunder to monitor Otega Oweh as he recovers from torn Achilles tendon
