April 4, 2026, 6:10 p.m. CT
Opening the back door to the parking lot, Thomas Sorber’s jaw fell to the floor. The 20-year-old lived through what Dillon Jones had to experience last year — a car filled with packing peanuts. To the brim so that it’s nearly impractical to vacuum out.
The Oklahoma City Thunder recently conducted a fun prank on the first-year player. The April Fool’s Day joke went viral on social media as Sorber’s teammates brought out their phones to record his reaction.
That’s one way to welcome Sorber into the NBA as we near the end of the 2025-26 regular season — even if he hasn’t suited up yet. He sustained a torn ACL in Sept. 2025 that knocked him out for the whole year. He joined Chet Holmgren and Nikola Topic as guys who served redshirt seasons.
A pretty brutal way to start your NBA journey. Especially in Sorber’s case. His lone collegiate season at Georgetown was cut short due to foot surgery. He missed the 2025 Summer League because of it. The next time he suits up, it’ll be nearly 18 months since his last game.
Even with the major setback, Sorber has kept his head high. Seven months after he sustained the knee injury, he’s ramped up his activity. To the point that he’s participating in some parts of OKC practices and pregame warmups. While the rest of the Thunder vie to go back-to-back, his ambitions involve simply returning to the court.
Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!
To make Sorber feel like part of the team, Williams and others stuffed his car with packing peanuts. The innocuous prank was brainstormed to playfully give him a reality check of what the NBA is all about. Williams talked about it in detail.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wiliams joked. “It was a mixed thing. We had to get him. There was some stuff adding up. We kinda let it slide for a couple of things and that was the last straw. It was a fun thing to do. Thomas knows we love him. He’s a rookie. I think he’s the first teammate we’ve had that I’ve had where he’s a young guy.”
Cool to see Sorber build up a rapport with his Thunder teammates. Taken with the No. 15 pick of the 2025 NBA draft, the Thunder obviously see him as someone with potential to be a long-term piece. Not that long ago, the growing thought was that he’d eventually become OKC’s backup center.
Things can obviously change on that front. But the Thunder figuring out how to give a borderline lottery pick rotation minutes is one of several rich-person problems they have to figure out later on down the road. For now, though, his potential is tantalizing enough to keep folks excited about what he could add to this group.