Jalen Williams will sit out Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Lakers, giving Jared McCain a cleaner path to minutes as the Thunder try to manage a nagging hamstring strain in the final stretch of the regular season.
For McCain, the timing matters. Before Williams returned on March 23, he was averaging 13.1 points while shooting 46.5 percent from the floor and 43.5 percent from deep. Since then, his production has fallen to 5.3 points on 41.0 percent shooting from the field and 19.0 percent from beyond the arc, while his minutes have dropped from 19.8 to 14.7.
The Thunder have four games left before the postseason, and Tuesday is their final back-to-back of the regular season. McCain is soon slated to play in his first postseason run, which makes every late-season minute more valuable than a routine night in the schedule.
That is what gives this game extra weight. McCain arrived to the Thunder on February 5 ahead of the trade deadline, then found more space earlier in the season when Williams was sidelined. When Williams came back on March 23, the rotation tightened and McCain’s numbers went with it.
The contrast is hard to ignore. Williams’ absence creates an opening, but McCain still has to turn it into something more than a brief reprieve. The Thunder are protecting a key player, and McCain is left trying to prove his offense can travel back to where it was before the minutes and the shots started disappearing.
If he does that on Tuesday, it would not solve everything. But it would matter in the one way that counts now: it would show he can still carve out a role before the games start to mean even more.
