It’s been a brutal training camp and preseason for the Oklahoma City Thunder with their health. Similar to last year, they’ve slowly seen their depth chart shattered with injury after injury to role players.
While none have been catastrophic yet, they’re starting to add up. The thousand papercuts could put the Thunder in a situation where their bench is shorter than they’d like to see for 2025-26 Opening Night and beyond when the regular season starts.
The Thunder will be without Kenrich Williams, Nikola Topic and Thomas Sorber to start the season. Jalen Williams continues to rehab his surgically-repaired wrist after he battled through a torn ligament in their entire NBA playoff run.
Now, Isaiah Joe and Ajay Mitchell were added to the list of guys dealing with an ailment. A 116-101 preseason loss to the Indiana Pacers was a costly one. Both key role players had injuries in the first half.
Joe sustained a knee injury that had him slowly leave the court with some help. Mitchell rolled his ankle on Brooks Barnhizer’s foot. He also needed help to get off the court. Even tougher luck for him, too, considering it was his preseason debut after he missed the last week with an ankle sprain.
The Thunder have two preseason games left against the Milwaukee Bucks and the Denver Nuggets. Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault didn’t give exact details on Joe and Mitchell, but he umbrella’d all of the preseason injuries together and said everybody is progressing well.
“We’re going to travel some guys on Tuesday. It’s also preseason and we’re being cautious with anybody that’s got anything. It’ll be a mix of guys,” Daigneault said. “But all of the guys that have been out with injury-related things are progressing nicely in their own way. We’re trying to use the preseason first and foremost to get healthy and second get ourselves ready basketball-wise.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Joe and Mitchell are ready by Opening Night. Both were penciled in as important rotation players. If not, that really hurts OKC’s bench. It could be a similar start to last year when they juggled injuries throughout the regular season.