Kenrich Williams tabbed as out for the season with wrist injury

The Oklahoma City Thunder have battled injuries and adversity throughout the 2022-23 NBA season. Even before training camp was even in session, they lost their second overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, Chet Holmgren, for the season. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has missed the past four games with an abdominal injury and then being placed in health and safety protocols. At the same time, Aleksej Pokusevski and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl each missed significant time. Now, Kenrich Williams is out for the remainder of the season.

Despite all the adversity the youngest roster in the NBA, and second youngest in league history, has been through, the Oklahoma City Thunder sit with a 28-34 record, two and a half games out of the NBA play-in tournament, and the same number away from the fifth best NBA Draft Lottery odds.

Oklahoma City Thunder wing Kenrich Williams will miss the remainder of the 2022-23 NBA season with a wrist injury sustained on Tuesday night against the Sacramento Kings.

The OKC Thunder are playing the most condensed portion of their schedule with games every day, or so it seems. Now, they lack even more depth with the loss of Kenrich Williams, who played a vital role in the Thunder’s mid-season surge in December and January.

Kenrich Williams’s season is over after playing 53 games, making ten starts, averaging eight points, five rebounds, two assists, and nearly a steal per game. Williams shot almost 52 percent from the floor and 37 percent from beyond the arc.

The TCU product turned in a career-high 70 percent from the rim, a career-best 48 percent from the mid-range, and an impressive 44 percent on corner triples. According to cleaning the glass, Williams also shot a career-high in the long-mid-range shooting 58 percent.

Synergy grades Kenrich Williams out as a good defender, allowing just 0.938 points per possession and holding opponents to 41 percent from the floor.

This is a massive blow to Mark Daigneault’s rotations and will test the limits of some of the team’s young roster. However, Kenrich Williams is expected to fully recover as he undergoes surgery on his wrist. The exact injury is a scapholunate ligament rupture.

However, do not let this injury fool you. The OKC Thunder are not packing in their season, and everything stays the same with the intent of every game. They will try to win without a very valuable piece due to a problematic injury. This is life in the NBA. Injuries happen and sometimes derail a season’s win-loss record.