Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams is well on his way to being a star in the game, but if anyone had told him that back when he was in high school, they would have been laughed out of the building. Quite often, NBA stars start showing signs of greatness as children. Sometimes it is because puberty hits them like a truck and they get a foot taller than everybody else, or they simply start exhibiting skills that their peers cannot imagine. None of that happened to Jalen.
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Growing up, he idolised the likes of Kobe Bryant. But being acutely aware of his limitations even back then, Jalen knew there was a very small chance he could actually emulate the late Laker star. So, as his idol, he picked NBA journeyman Andre Miller.
Jalen was just 5’6 as a freshman in high school, unsure of when the growth spurt would hit him. So he wanted to look at ballers who had the cheat code of pace working for them. Unfortunately, while that may get you noticed right away in sports like soccer and athletics, NBA scouts often look for other attributes.
“I was under the radar. Nobody knew who I was. I used to play in the NY to LA thing. I don’t know if they do that, that little circuit. But it’s lowkey. There would be some killers out there. The biggest name was probably DJ Carton, I think,” Jalen reminisced.
“I was on the Adidas circuit a little bit, like the low end of that but I was playing in the back gyms with Paul Suber. I walked out of high school with two or three offers and went from there. I wasn’t a five-star recruit,” he added, noting that he had a very different high school experience from his brother, Utah Jazz star Cody Williams.
It was frustrating, he admitted, but asserted that he just kept working. “I was waking up early with my dad to go 40 minutes to go drive and shoot and then go back to school and go through … I played on all three teams too. So I played JV, freshman, varsity, all those. I will do all three practices and go shoot my with my dad, go AU practice and then now I am staying up till 1 am to do homework,” he added, reiterating just how frustrating it was to be doing like a never-ending cycle.
Jalen laughed as he remembered how his brother got to do all the cool things in school while he could only hope that he could pursue a good college programme. That all, of course changed in his senior year of high school, when he’d grown to 6’3″, and averaged about 25 points per game. And it wasn’t like he was doing badly before. Jalen claims it only made it all the more frustrating since he wasn’t doing anything wrong; he had the work ethic and the numbers to show for it.
And as far as his admission to Santa Clara is concerned, Jalen said, “I wish I had a fun story. I really just didn’t have a lot of options. The craziest part of my story is that the coach that saw me play … There’s this coach, Jason Lewig and he just to be going to his car, seeing me, stopped and I had 40 something in the game. And he watched that game and I got a offer that weekend. And I got two more after that from Santa Barbara and Hofstra.”
Once he was signed to the NBA, Jalen had a decent start. In his rookie season in 2022-23, he averaged 14.1 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 3.3 assists per game in 75 games. For a man of his talents, while the numbers are pretty good for a rookie, it was in his second season that he started making a jump towards becoming a star. In the 2023-24 season, Jalen played an important role on the Thunder, averaging 19.1 points, 4.5 assists, and 4.0 rebounds per game.
He followed it up with an All-Star season last year, averaging 21.6 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 5.1 assists a game, making All-NBA 3rd team, and All-Defensive 2nd team, while helping the Thunder win their first NBA Championship.
Now, that’s not bad for a guy who only had offers from three colleges!
