{"id":289880,"date":"2025-09-18T08:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T08:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/289880\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T08:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T08:43:13","slug":"jalen-williams-on-slam-magazine-cover-after-nba-championship-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/289880\/","title":{"rendered":"Jalen Williams on ‘SLAM’ Magazine cover after NBA championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though the entire world has gone digital, being on the cover of a SLAM Magazine still ranks high as one of the coolest career achievements for NBA players after graduating to the top of the league. Jalen Williams experienced that firsthand on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Williams was the subject of a feature piece by SLAM Magazine. The story detailed his journey from a late high school bloomer to a quiet college prospect to an NBA champion. The 24-year-old has had one of the more unlikely ascensions to stardom.<\/p>\n

The Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> had one of the greatest seasons ever. They finished with a historic 68-14 regular-season record and captured the Larry O’Brien trophy. While Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gets all the credit, they wouldn’t have been able to do that without Williams’ breakout season. He became a first-time All-Star and All-NBA player.<\/p>\n

Battling through a wrist injury, Williams added to his mythos in the playoffs. Entering with questions on if he’s a good-enough second-best player on a title contender, he shushed those concerns. His apex was a 40-point outburst in a Game 5 win in the 2025 NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

It’s been a summer filled with festivities for the Thunder and Williams. Being the face of a SLAM Magazine cover is the latest of a long list of cool bucket list items he can cross off. This comes with the territory of winning an NBA championship. You get celebrated for months afterward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though the entire world has gone digital, being on the cover of a SLAM Magazine still ranks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[59,72,7,15486,15488,355,617,311,74,832,364,3347,11297,15487,71,86,70,85,6,67,11296,310,475,179,3966,3965,61,134,132,66,83,312,73,833],"class_list":{"0":"post-289880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oklahoma-city-thunder","8":"tag-affiliate","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-books","12":"tag-books-u0026-literature","13":"tag-celebrities","14":"tag-celebrities-u0026-entertainment-news","15":"tag-city","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-jalen","18":"tag-jalen-williams","19":"tag-larry","20":"tag-larry-obrien","21":"tag-literature","22":"tag-local","23":"tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","24":"tag-national","25":"tag-national-sports","26":"tag-nba","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-obrien","29":"tag-oklahoma","30":"tag-oklahoma-city","31":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","32":"tag-oklahomacity","33":"tag-oklahomacitythunder","34":"tag-overall","35":"tag-overall-positive","36":"tag-positive","37":"tag-sports","38":"tag-sports-news","39":"tag-thunder","40":"tag-u0026","41":"tag-williams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}