Hoping for a clean slate, Jalen Williams sang music to fans' ears. The Oklahoma City Thunder held their 2026-27 Media Day. One of the bigger storylines of the all-day event? The All-NBA talent's health. After an injury-plagued year, he hopes the summer off has him ready to get back on track.
The Thunder fell five wins shy of their back-to-back ambitions last year. Williams' health is viewed as the biggest reason why that was the case. Two wrist surgeries and four hamstring strains limited him to 33 regular-season games and five NBA playoff games.
By OKC's season-ending Game 7 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, Williams was in street clothes. Any hope of a Disney-esque ending that finished with two rings went up in smoke. But now that it's in the past,
he hopes that the four months off have given him enough time to properly heal his soft-tissue problems.
"That was one of the big things. I had never really had any injuries that set me back. Looking back on my hamstring injury, for people who don't know, it's a touch-and-go thing," Williams said. "It's not like I'm pulling my hamstring in December where I can take all this time. It's like I'm pulling my hamstring sometimes in the middle of the playoffs."
Williams revealed that his latest hamstring strain — the fourth in a five-month span — is completely healed. He estimated that it happened sometime around mid-June. Which means, yes, he likely would've returned in a hypothetical 2026 NBA Finals matchup against the New York Knicks. But I digress.
Once Williams moved past the disappointment of his body betraying him, he went into the lab. Alongside the Thunder and their best medical staff members, they dove into the science and figured out a plan to make sure last year was a one-time anomaly and not the start of a disturbing trend with his lower body. He even held workouts with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's personal NBA trainer to ensure he exhausted every option to avoid another nightmare season.
"It's more just about rest and understanding my body and some of the cues to let me know that my hamstrings are going to get tight or understanding that it's not just my hamstring," Williams said. "Trying to open up my hips a little more and do stuff that I've been doing throughout my whole year. Just understanding my body more and more every year. So that if I have signs during the year, I can address them right away and know what to do."
That's interesting to hear. Love it when NBA players dive into the minutiae of their actual routine. Williams provided a little peek behind the curtain of what last year's injury woes were like. The Thunder did an incredible job of overcoming his absence for most of the year. But it eventually came back to bite them at the biggest stage. Not having an All-Star-level go-to scorer eventually booted them from the NBA playoffs.
"I don't look at anything as a setback. For me, it sucks more so that I work really hard at what I do. For me to not even be able to play just because of injury kinda sucks," Williams said. "But at the same time, what's meant for you will come back. All I can do is control my attitude, my effort going into it and what I do to respond to it. That's kinda it."
This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: Jalen Williams reveals he's fully cleared from lingering hamstring problems
