Jalen Williams had himself quite an impressive campaign in year two with the OKC Thunder.
From his scoring numbers to his distribution skills, the 23-year-old put forth a sensational sophomore run while serving as a top-three option on a legitimate playoff threat, as he dropped nightly averages of 19.1 points, 4.5 assists, 4.0 rebounds, and 1.1 steals on 54.0 percent shooting from the floor and 42.7 percent shooting from deep en route to a fourth-place finish in the Most Improved Player race.
Now, heading into year three, the expectation is that Williams is primed to take yet another step forward in his promising career trajectory, with the forward himself even telling us at TI that the goal is for him to take "multiple steps."
Though on the surface, it doesn't seem like there are all that many aspects of his game that are in need of serious refining, perhaps one area in his repertoire that could use for some tweaking is his shot creation game.
Thunder need Jalen Williams to step up in the shot creation department
Last season, it became evident that the Thunder are extremely confident in Jalen Williams as a player. So much so, in fact, that in just year two they had him serve as the clear number two offensive weapon behind superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, as his 14.0 shot attempts per game trailed only the latter's 19.8.
And while his points averages and shooting efficiency wound up skyrocketing as a result, one negative takeaway people have from his 2023-24 showing was his somewhat lacking ability to create for himself on offense.
When looking at the advanced metrics, Williams managed to register a whopping 1,355 points on the season, good enough for the 47-best mark in the entire association. However, of these points accumulated, only 110 were generated from isolation plays.
To put this into perspective, SGA saw a whopping 512 of his 2,254 points come in such sets.
It became extremely obvious at times that when defenses would hone in on the Thunder cornerstone, the club's offense would stagnate a bit due, in large, to the supporting cast's seeming inability to generate scoring plays at an efficient and frequent rate.
Williams himself struggled mightily to pick up this kind of slack under the bright lights of the postseason, especially in round two against the Mavericks where he converted on a mere 38.5 percent of his unassisted field goal attempts. In comparison, he cashed in on a highly efficient 61.5 percent of his assisted attempts during this semifinal matchup.
Though Williams has gone on record to note that there are several areas of his game that he wishes to improve upon heading into year three, arguably the most important is his isolation and self-creating style of play.
How he addresses this obvious sore spot within his arsenal could be the difference between the Thunder advancing to a Conference Final and beyond and having history repeat itself by falling flat early on in the postseason.