The Oklahoma City Thunder just suffered about as devastating of a blow as a professional basketball organization could imagine.
In just one early-season report, they lost two of their most important starters for potentially the entire season. One was expected. Jalen Williams - the All-NBA forward who played an invaluable role to their 2025 championship run - suffered a gruesome under-the-basket injury in the fourth quarter of their recent win. The ruling of his long recovery was inevitable.
What wasn't expected, though, was that they would lose Cason Wallace for a similar length of time. His shocking injury reminds the Atlanta Hawks of something that unfortunately happened to them in the 2024-25 season.
Wallace's injury listing is identical to Jalen Johnson's two seasons ago
Nobody around the Hawks has forgotten about receiving the impossible news of Johnson's season-ending injury midway through the promising 2024-25 campaign.
And yes, it was season-ending. While the Wallace news broke months earlier than Johnson's did, it wasn't an entirely smooth road to recovery. It likely still would've ended his season if it happened at a similar time.
He got the exact same ruling as Johnson did.
According to ESPN's Shams Charania, on top of the feared Williams news, Wallace will undergo surgery for a "torn labrum in his left shoulder."
When Johnson went down with the same injury, his return didn't happen until the next season. He was unable to make his long-awaited return until completion of a six-month rehabilitation program.
Eventually, Johnson returned to action, exceeding his prior form, but the news was nothing short of devastating when it arrived. Atlanta had just begun transcending eras. It was the first post-Dejounte Murray year, and with Dyson Daniels as a newcomer, the Hawks' young core was beginning to shine.
Johnson's injury forced him to miss their Play-In Tournament appearance, and left significant question marks on just how far they could've gone if healthy.
OKC must be like Atlanta and not overcorrect following the horrible news
It's easy to make a panic move after news as significant as this drops.
After all, they're looking to compete now and maximize Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's prime. With Williams and Wallace likely both done for the year, it certainly becomes much harder to do that.
In Atlanta, during the 2024-25 season, they didn't go out and acquire another All-Star forward when theirs went down. Instead, they leveraged short-term success for the bigger picture, and it's got them more than on the right track now.
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