Jalen Williams: Me and D-Book had a jump ball. You know how you wrestle for the ball and nobody really wants to give it up? That’s basically what happened. I remember pulling my hand out of the mix—there were a couple people involved—and I heard what sounded like a paper ripping or a switch-type noise. Then my hand was just on fire. The whole top of my wrist was burning. If I backtrack a little, I think what made it give out was that I’d already been dealing with a wrist sprain most of the season. It was frustrating because I had just gotten to a point where I was shooting better, had gotten used to the pain, and the sprain was improving. Then I tore it completely. I finished that game. It was burning. I think I took some ibuprofen during the game and was good after that—didn’t feel much. I was in Arizona, my family and friends were there, so I didn’t really think about it. After the game we had team dinner, went out with family, and then when I got to the hotel, halfway through the night my hand swelled up like crazy. My fingers were fat, my whole wrist was swollen. I couldn’t flex it up or down or side to side. It was the worst it had ever been. We got an MRI the next day after I flew back. Still in pain, couldn’t move it. Worst it’s ever felt. Got the results back two days later—they said I tore it. This was around the time the season had just ended, so we had about a week off. I think we got nine days total, maybe a little more. That time off helped. -via YouTube / July 9, 2025

Jalen Williams: They told me—and I don’t want to make this a “Kobe thing”—but he was someone they brought up who had played through it. So it was doable. That week, I worked on changing my jump shot to shoot in a way that relied only on my fingertips, with no follow-through. I practiced that for about six days. Then we decided on a cortisone shot and a lidocaine shot. I started practicing with those, and you’ll see a time-lapse of that in the video. I got lidocaine shots before every single playoff game and sometimes mid-week too, just so I could keep working on my jumper. I also tried different tape jobs, coming in after practice to experiment with what would let me dribble without flexing my hand. Big shoutout to the medical team—the doctors, Donnie, Toby, everyone across the street that helped. They were huge throughout the playoffs. We played the Memphis series first. My hand held up okay. The good thing about that series was we only had a day between games, so I didn’t have to deal with stiffness as much. -via YouTube / July 9, 2025