Dribbling the ball on the baseline, Thomas Sorber has attended the last two pregame warmups. Not only did he get the best view of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s in-game preparations, but it’s also another one of the ways he can stay around the NBA champion.

It’ll be a redshirt year for Sorber. He sustained a torn ACL in Sept. 2025. After foot surgery cut his sole collegiate season at Georgetown short, he’ll go even longer between games as he’ll miss the entire 2025-26 season recovering from the knee injury.

Unfortunately for the Thunder, this isn’t anything new. Chet Holmgren and Nikola Topic also missed their entire first year with injuries. Holmgren with a Lisfranc injury and Topic with a torn ACL.

As the Thunder sit at a perfect 6-0 in the early stages of the 2025-26 regular season, Sorber has been at the home games to watch and support from the bench. Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said it’s one of the ways he joins the camaraderie.

“It’s always tricky with a long-term recovery like that. If we have him with the team every minute of the day, then he’d be here until 3 p.m. He’d have to wait to do all of his work,” Daigneault said. “It’s necessary and practical to have him do some rehab stuff away from the team.”

Sorber has undergone his own journey from behind the scenes. While torn ACLs are no longer the career-latering injury they were a decade ago, they still take nearly a year and then some to fully recover from. The 19-year-old will likely go a year and a half between games.

“You also don’t want him to be completely disconnected,” Daigneault said. “We try to thread a nice needle between team time, especially with film and stuff he can participate in and also his own track.”

When the Thunder added Sorber with the No. 15 pick in the 2025 NBA draft, they’d hope he’d show enough flashes to influence some of their upcoming big roster decisions. Now, they’ll do that with zero NBA tape of him. That said, both sides have made the best of a bad situation.

“He’s a very social person. He’s extroverted. He’s one of the guys,” Daigneault said. “He’s done a great job with the guys. They really like him. You can tell he’s in the club.”

Mark Daigneault on Thomas Sorber watching the last couple of pregame warmups: “He’s a very social person. He’s extroverted. He’s one of the guys. He’s done a great job with the guys. They really like him. You can tell he’s in the club.” pic.twitter.com/u5t979bUfO

— Clemente Almanza (@CAlmanza1007) November 1, 2025