Predicting future All-Star appearances for Thunder's current roster: Sky's the limit
Not in Oklahoma City
Cason Wallace will take part in the Rising Stars event tonight and has been surprisingly relevant even as a rookie. He is shooting 41.2 percent from deep, playing high-level defense and perfectly filling the role asked of him. Yet with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams ahead of him in the pecking order it seems unlikely he will find the space to blossom into an All-Star in Oklahoma City. If he were to be moved, such as in a large deal for another star, he could find the space to expand his game to that level on another team.
Josh Giddey faces a similar dilemma in that he won't have the room to expand his game to an All-Star level, but in contrast to Wallace that's in large part because Giddey can't scale into lineups where he is off-ball. If he finds his way to a team where he can have the ball in his hands, he has an outside chance at a selection.
Jalen Williams will be an All-Star
No second-year player has ever averaged 19 points, four rebounds, four assists and had an effective field goal percentage as high as Jalen Williams' 59.8 percent. In fact, no one has even put up those numbers and had an EFG% of 57 or higher!
It gets even more crazy if you zoom out. Only 12 players in NBA history have ever put up those numbers on the same efficiency as Williams, and all of them are multi-time All-Stars and many are heading for the Hall of Fame: historical names like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Charles Barkley, and modern names like Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Domantas Sabonis.
Jalen Williams is ascending to an elite level and is almost certainly going to be an All-Star, if not a multiple-time All-Star. He is a three-level scorer and will only improve as he ages into his prime. If it's not next season, it's likely the one after; if Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics can make three All-Star games, Williams can beat that; his team should be jsut as good over the next decade and he is already a better player than Brown.
Prediction: 4 All-Star appearances