Not long before Jalen Williams represented a proof of concept for the Oklahoma City Thunder , he dreamed big and waited for his size to match his ambitions. As a 5-foot-6 freshman in high school, his family tried to reassure him that a growth spurt was coming. That the tonnage of work he would put in could be rewarded when the genetics caught up.

While Williams has come on quickly in the NBA , he was a late bloomer. He was too small, then too lightly recruited. The NBA did not become a reality for him until midway through his junior year at Santa Clara.

That was just two years ago, still so near that even he is surprised when he realizes how little time has passed. In that time, he has made a steep ascent, from a mid-major darling to lottery pick to, now, part of the new star trio that has led the Thunder to the top of the Western Conference and a promise they have not held since the days of Kevin Durant , Russell Westbrook and James Harden .

While Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a Most Valuable Player finalist and Holmgren would have won Rookie of the Year if not for a certain phenom in San Antonio, Williams may best embody what the Thunder has put together in their audacious rebuild. A 6-5 wing who can lead an offense and defend across positions, Williams has built a case this season for Most Improved Player; next year, he might just be an All-Star. Like the Thunder, he does it all.

“It’s an easier answer to tell you the role that he doesn’t occupy, which is none of them,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “He’s everywhere.”

Slowly, then urgently, the Thunder has evolved into one of the most intriguing teams in the NBA. General manager Sam Presti built a roster as flexible as it is talented. Head coach Mark Daigneault does not pigeonhole players by position. Guards set screens and center Chet Holmgren causes havoc on the perimeter.

The Thunder invoke Total Football on the hardwood. This season, they had a coming-out party, pushing their way, ahead of schedule, to win 57 games in the regular season, smash the New Orleans Pelicans in the first round, and take a 1-0 lead on the Dallas Mavericks in the conference semifinals.

Williams is omnipresent in Oklahoma City. He was the Thunder’s second-leading scorer and rebounder and tied for the team lead in assists as it swept the Pelicans. Daigneault entrusted him as a key fourth-quarter catalyst and as a key cog in his defense, responsibilities earned through time and repetition. It was Williams who iced the Mavericks in Game 1 with eight straight points , including two daggers 3s, early in the fourth quarter as Gilgeous-Alexander sat on the bench.

“He started off by being very, very good in the system, with the system fundamentals on both ends of the floor,” Daigneault said. “And then his role has expanded outward from that as he’s cleared more and more hurdles and shown that he can maintain a level of efficiency with that level of freedom on both ends.”

Williams got here unconventionally. He was not always on a glide path to the NBA. He was barely on one to a Division I program. At Perry High School in Gilbert, Ariz., he was short, but long. When he burst onto the scene two years ago during the NBA Draft Combine, weeks before the Thunder made him the No. 12 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, his family foresaw a massive climb, but few else did.

“It was something that I thought I could do like when I first started and my parents kind of ingrained that in me to be able to do whatever I set my mind to,” Williams said.

Ron and Nicole Williams had always been a ballast for Jalen, the supportive parents who provided confidence when it was still delayed. Coaches, past and present, point to them as a reason for his success. They met at the Air Force Academy, and played before and after they entered the service.

Ron was a 6-foot-6 point-center, and played for the Air Force’s top team that competed against other services worldwide. He was a point guard in school who sprouted late into a center’s body. Nicole passed on several athletic scholarship offers to go into the Air Force as well. She scored like a shooting guard and rebounded like a power forward.

They raised their three kids in basketball, and after they moved to Arizona when Jalen was 7 years old, they started turning trips to the gym on Luke Air Force Base into family outings.

Ron and Nicole soon had to preach patience. While Cody, their youngest son, developed early — he’s a likely top-10 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft after one year at Colorado — Jalen took his time.

As a high school freshman in high school, he prioritized long-range shooting to make up for his size. He learned how to get his shot off against bigger defenders. Jalen had long arms and big feet even as he hovered around 6-feet, so his parents reminded him how beneficial it would be to have the skills of a point guard when he eventually began to stretch.

“I always told him it was a blessing to start out small instead of being the biggest kid on the court,” Ron Williams said .

When the growth spurt came, Nicole said, his parents told him it was what he had been waiting for. He grew almost eight inches from his sophomore year of high school to his senior year.

By the time Santa Clara assistant coach Jason Ludwig noticed him, Williams was 6-1, on his way to 6-5, and fit the staff’s criteria. Despite still being undersized, he was a guard who could pass, dribble and shoot.

“He was always a very smart and skilled player,” Ludwig said. “Very fundamentally sound, but a little slow-footed because he just hadn’t gotten into his body yet. We didn’t know how much he was gonna grow. He was so physically immature.”

He grew another two inches by the time he got on campus and quickly made an imprint with his defense. Williams hounded opposing guards, even on his own team in practice. Just 11 games into the season he displaced Tahj Eaddy, an All-West Coast Conference guard the previous season, from the starting lineup.

The Williams family and Ludwig hoped Jalen might be ready for the NBA after his sophomore year, but the 2020-21 season was difficult. Santa Clara was forced off campus because of stringent COVID-19 rules. The team moved to Santa Cruz, 30 miles from the school, and lived in a hotel from November through February. They practiced and played at the Golden State Warriors’ G League facility. Ludwig said the team had a two-hour window each day to use the gym. If players wanted to get shots up after practice, they had to split the roster between shooting free throws and jumpers. Shooting percentages cratered across the team. There was no time for skill development or extra work.

But the coaching staff had seen glimpses during the preseason that made them believe he could be ready for the NBA by the end of the season. Instead, he returned for his junior year.

Santa Clara suddenly had NBA scouts arriving with consistency. Williams averaged 18 points and 4.2 assists per game and hit nearly 40 percent of his 3s. But his big breakout was at the draft combine, where he starred in five-on-five scrimmages and rocketed up draft boards. The Thunder were already aware. When Williams went in for an interview that week, Daigneault got a quick scouting report from Thunder executive Nick Collison before it began: He’s very good.

“There’s no way that I would have projected that Jalen could be a future NBA All-Star,” Ludwig said. “Does it all make sense now? Yeah. He matured physically. He grew into his body. He’s an amazing kid. He has an awesome work ethic. He comes from a great family. He’s grounded. He’s humble. He has all the intangibles. Now it all makes sense. He has all those things, right. But I would have never guessed that.”

The vision for this iteration of the Thunder came out of necessity during a dreary 22-50 season in 2020-21. That version of the Thunder was just trying to make things work in Daigneault’s first season as head coach.

It was a transitional time, as the organization re-centered itself around Gilgeous-Alexander. They surrounded the young guard with bigs like Al Horford and Mike Muscala , who tended to the perimeter while Gilgeous-Alexander had a knack for getting to the rim. Others around them were adept cutters. The Thunder kept trying new things and inverting the floor — smaller guards using the paint, bigger forwards stationed outside of it — on offense. Then they built on it. The Thunder already had Luguentz Dort , a physical, defense-first wing. They added Josh Giddey , a big wing and a sweet passer, with the sixth pick of the draft in 2021. They drafted Holmgren second in 2022, bringing in a 7-footer who could handle, shoot and protect the rim.

Williams went 10 picks later and has been the perfect fit, as a multi-dimensional playmaker and a hawk on defense who can toggle between positions. At times, Daigneault has handed him the offense, and allowed Williams to create. Williams finished 805 pick-and-rolls as a ballhandler and was in the 89th percentile in points per possession.

Williams believes his junior year at Santa Clara was especially valuable because it put him in more situations as a handler in pick-and-rolls. As an added benefit, the college game typically features a more crowded paint.

“Now there’s a lot more space and I’m in the pick-and-roll with Chet,” Williams said. “So it makes it a lot easier for me to kind of go out there and just kind of be free. Mark has a lot of trust in me to make the right reads and do that and I don’t really play selfish so I’m out there trying to make sure everybody eats.”

Daigneault has given Williams the freedom to make mistakes and to earn more responsibility. He abides by a belief in his players. He trusts them first, and allows them to prove him wrong. That’s been to Williams’ benefit.

This season, his production jumped. He was one of the best long-range shooters in the league, hitting 42.7 percent of his 3s. He became a reliable go-to option late in games; Williams regularly led the Thunder offense in the fourth quarter as Gilgeous-Alexander sat to start the period as part of Daigneault’s rotation. Only 11 players scored more fourth-quarter points this season than Williams.

The growth has been visible to observers near and far. Holmgren, who played against Williams at Gonzaga during his sole college season, has seen the changes firsthand.

“He’s still got a lot of the same kind of herky-jerky game, crossing over, stop-and-going,” Holmgren said of Williams. “Playing with his size and his length, both sides of the floor. He’s making shots off the dribble at a high level. He’s really worked on that. Going left in the midrange. The 3s too. He’s added a lot to his game and I don’t think it’s gonna stop. He’s got a lot more of a vision for what he wants to be and he’s gonna continue to add throughout his career.”

Williams has also had to be versatile. The Thunder demand a lot of their guards. They ask them to screen and to play larger than their positions. Like his parents, Williams has become adept at sliding his skill set across the front and back line. He had to learn how to play bigger.

His 7-foot-2 wingspan made his defensive transition simpler. His length was always an advantage, allowing him to pair an approach with a physique that suited his mindset. Now, size and skill have come together at the right time. He was top-20 in the NBA this season in deflections per game, and the Thunder were second in the league as a team.

“Once I grew, I think I was kind of able to just kind of get more athletic and it all kind of clicked,” Williams said. “So now my body was in the right position and now I don’t have to reach as much and now I’m starting to kind of piece that all together.”

Williams has made a habit of encroaching into airspace, too. He can act as a disruptor on the backline for the Thunder, barging into passing lanes or throwing his hands near a ballhandler and coming out with the ball. He is among the league’s best pickpockets.

When Daigneault considers Williams’ unlikely arc, he brings up Jalen’s parents and the structure they provided. Because of that, Jalen has never changed. The first time Daigneault met him was during Williams’ interview with the Thunder at the draft combine two years ago.

“You don’t know what mask they’re wearing, you know, but in hindsight, he was exactly who he is in his Chicago interview and in his on-site visit in Oklahoma City,” Daigneault said. “Like he didn’t break character at all. That’s who he is.”

The family still treasures the journey. They grew up Los Angeles Lakers fans even as they worked around the world and settled in Arizona. Ron Williams is from Los Angeles and has rooted for the Lakers his entire life. Nicole Williams grew up a fan of Magic Johnson. Jalen idolized Kobe Bryant. The only thing that broke up their long talks after dinner each night were the Lakers games they would throw on the television. Williams wore No. 8 because of Bryant, and he collected Lakers action figures.

The family had always organized trips to the Staples Center when Ron came home — not for games, but just to take pictures outside of it. When the Thunder played in Los Angeles last February, on the night LeBron James set the all-time scoring record, it finally hit Nicole how far her son had come.

After that game, Jalen brought his parents down to the floor. It was his first game at the arena. Nicole thought back to the times the family would go bowling, wearing their Lakers jerseys. Now, Jalen was signing his Thunder jersey and handing it to them.

Ron described the idea of his son playing in the NBA as an out-of-body experience. But Nicole has moved beyond that.

“All his hard work is paying off, but he has work to do,” she said. “But it’s, ‘Wow, kid, you’re doing it. You’re doing exactly what you want to do.’”