March 2, 2026, 7:01 p.m. CT
Juggling injuries all season, the Oklahoma City Thunder have relied on their rich depth. They managed to stay atop the NBA standings all year despite guys rotating through the injury report. About everybody on the roster has missed significant time. Including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
In the reigning MVP’s recent three-week absence, guys like Cason Wallace and Isaiah Joe stepped up. Both became more than just simply catch-and-shoot guys. More on-ball responsibility helped them learn on the job. That experience could pay dividends down the road.
It hasn’t all been sunshine and rainbows, though. Someone who’s struggled despite ample opportunities has been Aaron Wiggins. Over the years, the 27-year-old has shown he can easily scale up as a scorer. He’s dropped 40 points before with his on-ball creation.
The last month has been pretty rough for Wiggins, though. He’s averaged 7.4 points on 33.3% shooting, 2.8 rebounds and 1.8 assists in his last nine games. He’s shot 20% from 3 on 3.3 attempts. All in games where OKC would’ve welcomed a scoring outburst.
Despite the results not being there, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault has remained fully confident in Wiggins. After all, he’s carved out quite the career since he joined OKC in 2021 as the No. 55 pick. You give him more than a month to snap out of things. He’s earned that leeway.
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Daigneault talked about Wiggins’ recent struggles after the Thunder came away with a 100-87 win over the Dallas Mavericks. He had six points on 2-of-7 shooting in 15 minutes off the bench.
“Generally, it’s an 82-game season. Not everybody plays at an optimal level all 82 games. Fortunately for us, we have a lot of guys who are high-floor players,” Daigneault said. “That even when they don’t have a fastball offensively or whatever it is, they’re still very functional and playable. He’s in that category.”
The NBA regular season is a marathon. Teams play games every other day for a six-plus-month period. That forces most guys to go through ebbs and flows. Especially role players. Right now, Wiggins is going through a valley. But a peak could be around the corner.
The Thunder will continue to play Wiggins. That doesn’t mean they’ll blindly gift him rotation minutes, though. As they do with most of the roster, they read the game as it plays out. Daigneault has done an excellent job over the years at squeezing the most juice out of the players.
“It’s easy to ride with him through kind of the dips, if you will. Cason was another example before he just really popped. He had a stretch of time where he wasn’t really playing great, but he’s still easy to play. He’s competitive. He plays inside the team. He executes on both ends of the floor, which Wiggs does too,” Daigneault said. “We’re going to need him. He’s going to play better than this offensively. We’ve seen that from his body of work. In the meantime, we can ride through them, because he’s a low-mistake player.”