Jalen Williams plays blame game after loss to Spurs without Victor Wembanyama
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For the first time this season, Jalen Williams and the Oklahoma City Thunder suffered their first set of consecutive losses after losing to a San Antonio Spurs team missing Victor Wembanyama 110-104 Tuesday. After the Thunder lost to the Dallas Mavericks without Luka Doncic, a 27-12 Thunder run came short of eliminating a 21-point deficit against the Spurs, which Williams pointed to Oklahoma City’s slow starts during his postgame availability.
He blames the Thunder’s poor defense in the opening frame, which Williams says leads to their two recent opponents gaining comfort and confidence. Meanwhile, Oklahoma City’s uphill battle to erase a double-digit deficit left them short at the end of the fourth quarter in both games.
“It’s just slow. Bad defense to start, and then everybody’s comfortable. It’s hard to stop teams when they’re comfortable, no matter who you’re playing,” Williams said. “That roster that we just played has a lot of hungry guys that are trying to make a name for themselves and trying to get into their rotation, and they’re trying to figure stuff out. And they’re almost .500, so they’re still competing, and guys are getting in a groove. So, if you don’t shut that off early, they’ll just have confidence throughout the whole game.
“It was kind of the same thing with Dallas, I feel like. Probably not the same situation as the Spurs. But when you let guys get comfortable early, it’s hard to course-correct that over the course of 48 minutes,” Williams concluded.
Making up for Wembanyama’s production in his absence was a group effort, as seven Spurs players finished in double figures in points. Keldon Johnson’s 22 points, including six threes, led the charge. Harrison Barnes finished with 20 points and eight rebounds, while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led OKC with 32 points.
Jalen Williams blames losses on Thunder’s poor defensive starts
Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams talked about straying from a ‘loser mentality’ in the sense of missing centers that make life easier on defense as the San Antonio Spurs won without Victor Wembanyama. For Williams, it’s about the Thunder getting off to tough, grittier starts that plagued Oklahoma City in its most recent losses.
“A lot of our offense stems from how we’re doing on defense. You can tell our offense got better when we got more engaged defensively,” Williams said. “Nobody’s offense is perfect in the NBA, and ours is still far from that. But I think a lot of our issues arise when we’re not playing defense and being scrappy. And I think right when we got scrappy is when we started getting stops.”
Williams finished with 27 points, ten rebounds, and five steals. He was also critical in the Thunder’s late push.
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