Jalen Williams on his critics: “That’s the media. I’m never going to be perfect to anybody and I’m not. I don’t really need the league to give me flowers. I don’t really care. I got a ring.” Also specifically called out Stephen A. Smith
This guy was the clear second best player on a championship team and he just signed a max extension. It seems like he’s got good people around him and is happy. He’s got no reason to care what anyone on the outside thinks and he shouldn’t care.
He also had 40 points in an NBA finals critical game 5 and played the whole playoffs with an injured wrist. He’s clearly going about things the right way.
His only flaw is having basically the same name as his meme-tier teammate
Fun fact, Jaylin Williams had 6 games last season where he played 25+ minutes, and 3 of them were triple doubles
I wouldn’t call it a flaw or anything, the other JW is probably one of the best teammates in the league and shows that he’s an actual player unlike a guy such as Thanasis
Which JW?
The other JW not the other other JW
The JW on OKC?
No, the other one, the JW on OKC. Come on, you know this. J Williams?
Jaylin Williams is a decent player
LOL
It’s why I have “accepted” the Thunder (my way of saying I definitely don’t like them, but hating them is futile). Same thing happened with the Spurs. If Shai and Jalen were out here running their mouths and being cocky, I’d surely hate them. I think the criticisms can be fair at times and for them to just respond with “yeah I really don’t care” is lowkey badass and awesome. I think a reporter straight up asked SGA in the playoffs about what people say about his foul baiting and his response was literally just “I don’t care”. Can’t hate on that, more power to you. But also like, fuck the Thunder lol.
Why is it “fuck the Thunder” when they drafted and traded well, developed players, and ended up winning a title as like the smallest market in the league? Lol, you still sound like a hater.
If you’re a Mavs fan, it should be “fuck the Mavs” because y’all’s GM is obviously on drugs. You have a title after drafting a one of the best players of all time and having him take massive discounts for 20 years..all for one title..and it’s a miracle you got one. Shitty management.
Fuck the Thunder because they won and my team didn’t. It’s quite simple. I’m gonna be hating on every champion for the rest of my life considering how things have been going
Nah, Wizards are safe.
Hornets is in a super extra safe vault. Like wizards at least had some playoff success before
But Thunder fans like the Bulls cause of Giddey though we can be friends :(
Can’t dictate how people should feel about teams, sorry.
Not to speak for them but i personally hate the Thunder bc im a pacers fan and we were so so close 💔💔💔
Such a massive “what if” Hali was cooking in game 7
frrr man anyone who watches a lot of hali knows that when he starts hot it’s gonna be a heater too
I’m pretty sure there’s room to do both.
Because they should still be the sonics
Can you go through every professional sports team and inform me how I should personally feel about them? Thanks!
I didn’t say “fuck the Thunder” lol. It’s not that serious. I went to OU and lived with and among Thunder fans for four years. That would turn anyone off any team. It’s just fun and games man. I don’t like a geographical rival, get over it lol.
But wait, you did say “fuck the thunder”. I’m confused.
The last sentence of your post is “but also like, fuck the Thunder” lmao.
Don’t get defensive, just letting ya have it since you’re a Mavs fan and critical. I’m sure Nico’s vision will look amazing next year with AD and Cooper lol.
That’s epic
SGA had an even better point he made when talking about the foul baiting.
When they were a loser team and he averaged even MORE FTA per game no one cared. No one said anything about it or felt a need to talk about it. It’s not like it came out of no where. Now that he is winning all of a sudden it is the core issue and needs to be flagged for how they are getting wins.
I find this a much more compelling point from him because it points out how it’s only winners who get this level of scrutiny and if they weren’t winners no one would care.
You seem to be implying they know they’re getting away with something and don’t care when really they don’t care because they know the narrative is bullcrap.
Its funny that fans have made out OKC to be some diabolical masterminds that sneakily pay refs under the table to win. These guys just go out hoop and are young and hungry. If they had some real league Rep and experience maybe you could argue refs know them better but they have no credibility across the league being 24yrs old
OKC has had one of the worst FTA differentials in the league over the last 3 seasons, but somehow the refs always favor the Thunder? This is a narrative that will never make any sense to me.
Makes sense when you think of the NBa as WWE wrestling. Fake ass plots with a fake ass game
In a universe where every foul is called correctly, then it doesn’t make sense. But it’s clearly not a perfect world lol
That’s not what I said at all. I said the cool thing about them is that they don’t care what the narrative is, and they shouldn’t. I’m really not even sure how you came to your conclusion based on my comment lol.
Good but you say the criticisms are fair then bring up the foulbait criticisms not hard to see how we came to that conclusion.
I like this, I kinda went through the same thing with the Celtics after they won. I really used to have this extreme dislike of them, mostly on the basis of them routinely beating teams I like and disliking key players (Grant Williams, Marcus Smart, Tatum) but after they finally capped it off and won a chip I was just kinda like “you know what, fair play.” Tatum and Brown both seem like good dudes and great mole models amongst the league and it’s hard to disrespect (although many people still try) the extremely complete team and dominant season they put together last year.
This is what healthy sports fans do lol. I hated the Celtics as well and had the same reaction to them winning. Same feeling I had when the Eagles won the Super Bowl.
At the end of the day, if they win a championship, it’s hard to hate anymore
I’m kinda the opposite, but as a kid I always cheered for the heels more than the faces
What are people even saying? I thought he was pretty universally praised.
We truly live in the “my haters” era
Everyone’s gonna have their critics, but this man is clearly the 2nd best player on the best team in the league…at 24. Seems silly to shit on him.
Chet is probably praying to God for perfect health as now Jalen has to get doubled in the same fashion that SGA maintains a natural double. Chet is going to be shopping the lanes next season thanks to those two.
Also specifically called out Stephen A. Smith
A hero for our times.
As much as SAS sucks its ultimately ESPN’s fault for canning all their better talent and throwing SAS at every sport imaginable where he just says bullshit he doesn’t understand to drive clicks. Also the fault of people who eat it up and create a situation where ESPN can make that decision because it makes them money at much less cost.
SAS made a career of spouting nonsense. Both people hating him and loving him are both good for espn
“Falling for the bait” would mean engaging with his content to tell him he sucks. Or hate watching him on ESPN. I just think he sucks and I ignore him as much as is possible.
Winning a ring really makes a player impervious to almost anything. “I got a ring” just wins 99% of arguments
I agree and it is kind of funny, especially if you look at the context. If SGA didn’t have by far the best playoff series of his career against the Nuggets, then he would have been absolutely torn apart and memed to death, same thing happening in the second round two years in a row.
But everyone needs to be bailed out once in awhile, and he deserves the praise for how he finished out the finals. Without it, SGA would have been memed to death too.
its sick how young players have bought into ring culture. he didn’t even play that well yet thinks he’s immune to criticism cause he won a ring
I strongly dislike the thunder but he absolutely played well
40 pts on a bad wrist. Elite defense. Clutch bucket getter. Definitely didn’t play very well.
pretty sure Finals wasn’t one game
he shot 43% from field and 27% from 3pt in the Finals
ur fav player had 0/0/0 splits
Again, on a torn wrist. He had to change his shooting motion.
Yeah because you play to win the game, not win dumbass hypothetical arguments or fill up the stat sheet lmao.
Just keep on balling out ignore the haters, let your play speak for itself
Are we acting like Jalen Williams has any more haters than the average NBA player? Why does everyone have to put on the Kobe act nowadays
One of these days we’re gonna have John Konchar tweeting about not letting the outside noise and his doubters get to him
I mean he was getting shit on a lot during the playoffs(thunder fans included) like he said in the video, being hot and cold from game to game. I mean half the thunder sub Reddit was making trade packages with him being in the center of it after they lost game one against the nuggets. Especially the public not knowing about his wrist injury I can def see how that could piss you off. And I mean thunder as a team have got a bunch of flak since winning the chip ppl saying there needs to be an *. That and when he was still doing the barking people shit on him hard af lol
That could be said about literally every player who has a bad game in the playoffs.
SGA, Tatum, Ja, Embiid, Russ, Harden, etc have haters. Casuals probably don’t even know who Jdub is
He’s not even a top 3 hated dude on the fucking thunder lol
You’re probably right about him not being top three hated, lol. Probably goes SGA, Chet, Dort.
Honestly probably the most liked guy on the thunder
You’re right and I was shitting on those bum ass, bandwagon fans. I wish the sub couldve locked that sub after the trade deadline. We got 300,000 bandwagoners subscribed to our sub. Thankfully their not real basketball fans so they wont be in their too much.
Are we power ranking hating here? Man, we’ve really come a long way in terms of nitpicky reactions.
Thunder fans shit on him all year to act like SGA has no help on offense
The scrutiny NBA players face online and on TV is absurd. It’s valid for many or all of them to feel this way. We’d probably be no different in their position
In the playoffs there were literally posts on the Thunder sub calling for him to get traded and just generally insulting his play. So yeah, that’s more hate than the typical player as no other Thunder player was getting that type of hate.
You’re a Grizzlies fan.
Shut up.
Shouldnt you be crying about Micah Parsons right now?
Man I’m so happy he won a ring
You, Me, and the entire state of Oklahoma lol
I know every season there’s multiple deserving teams that don’t win their last game. But I’m so happy for this thunder team. They truly were special and I really enjoyed watching them all year. They deserved it as players more than we deserved it as fans.
does he actually get dragged by the media? j dub just had an amazing season
He took a lot of criticism for his performance against Denver especially game 6
He kinda sold a couple games before the finals where he looked REALLY bad. Also shat the bed against the mavs the year before so I guess hate comes from there
Maybe not as much the media but after g1 against the nuggets there were tons of thunder fans saying he needed to be the center of a trade for giannis and that he wasn’t good enough to be a legit #2. That and when he was barking after games the way r/NBA acted you would think he just open handed a woman on television lmao
The widespread sentiment before they won was that the guy holding them back was dub.
He had some tough looks last year in the playoffs that people held over him. The fact that the media thought a bunch of kids playing in their first playoffs should have been ice cold I think speaks to the state of sports media.
As an independent observer the narratives I was fed were SGA freethrows and Halliburton.
Who are the J Dub haters?
It was a big storyline entering the playoffs on if he could be a #2. Lowe and Simmons were both iffy on that.
Everybody agreed that Shai is great, BUT can JDub provide enough as a two?
I think it was 100% a valid question coming in. There were times in the Denver series where he didn’t look up to the task. But he pretty obviously proved himself so not sure what else is left to say.
Oh it 100% was. He was pretty bad in the Dallas series, as well. Once we got to the WCF and they had to have something to talk about, Stephen A and Perk went from calling him an elite bonafide #2 to insisting he needs to step up after we lost by 40 in Game 3. It’s just the nature of the media, which is what he’s getting at in the clip.
If that’s hating, what shaq said about rudy must be a warcrime.
Less ‘hating’ more doubting.
I don’t really think they were that iffy. Thunder were a juggernaut and they were looking at it like “if the thunder are gunna lose, how could it happen”
A very young #2 option having a rough series is probably one of the most conceivable possibilities. But either way I think they both thought the thunder were winning it
🙋♂️
I was not a believer after that Denver series.
He had some rocky games for sure. It was cool to see him grow into the role as the playoffs went along.
2⁄5 of the Thunder sub. Close more to 200,000 real fans than 500,000
who is even criticizing jdub? i dont think hes even top 5 hated okc player
every where he is posted … ppl in the comments call him lame & cringe. but whole time it’s really be these goofs in the comments that are the real lames. jdub a cool dude fasho
I see people mostly whining about “aura farming” something something… Even though it’s not even for them, it’s for their younger fans. Like Gen Z. So it annoys the older fan base and old heads.
Which is a W in my book.
I think he was a bit before the finals. Mostly “is he ready?” type stuff.
Translation: I’m too intelligent and too confident to give a shit about some balding 5head clown
I have high hopes for JDub. I truly believe he can be better than Shai and Im hoping he reaches that
Every player gets criticized.
He’s young rich and a champ. If I was him you couldn’t tell me anything lol
I absolutely love watching interviews with Dub. He’s so measured and articulate
His talent is insanely underrated. Was without a doubt the second best player on the best team in the league lol. That’s probably enough to warrant a spot as one of the best under 25s in the entire league.
He’s one of the best players under 25 without question imo
That’s a good mindset there young fella. Can’t please everybody.
It’s always profitable to call out Stephen A. If you can start a feud that’s free pub from all the ESPN-heads.
please dont specifically call out SAS. thats exactly what he wants
and yea, it was a bummer seeing folks even on here questioning him after a bad stretch in the playoffs. shooters shoot, and they have off games. and even then it was only like 2 consecutive games, where they werent in elimination risk, and he still contributed in other ways particularly being a pesky defender
theres just too much reaction in general, and it would be better for players, young players like him, to not hear any of it than let it get to him to the point that hes responding to it
LeBron has already shown everyone that as accomplished as that man is he still gets criticism
Bros still mad after he got called corny for trying to be kobe 😭🙏
As a laker fan, I wish the thunder nothing but success. Hell of a team and their starting 5 is fun to watch.
great guy
I feel like most of that is just a product of being on the thunder? too easy a target for haters nowadays
Who’s criticizing him? He’s a great young player…
He disappeared in the Mavs series last year. There was definitely criticism and people asking if he was ready to be a #2 on a championship team. The criticisms were valid, but he stepped up.
He was getting some. Coming into the postseason, people were looking at him specifically with a magnifying glass since the consensus after the series against the Mavs in 2024 was that OKC had no consistent second option, and Jdub (or Chet) needed to step up.
So on bad games, he got more flak. On top of that, he’s probably way more tapped into what people are saying about him than us, who don’t have to deal with it.
Jalen Williams or Jaylen Brown? Who would you take first?
He and the rest of the Thunder team have targets on their backs…Stay true to to yourself and team - MJ the ceiling is the roof 😂
I’ve never seen J Dub and Thundercat in the same room. 🤔
He’s one of the best all around players in the league. No clue what SAS said but don’t need to hear it anyway.
You can tell by the way that Jalen talks that he’s good friends with Kyrie. They all talk a certain way
He has critics?
He was absolutely it rly putrid in every big game before this years playoffs . It was fair . Playin, playoffs and IST final he was heinous
Which credible “media” people shit on him or the Thunder enough to warrant being asked about it on a podcast? Do these players consider reddit and tiktok shitposters media?
I’m glad adidas/Harden took J-dub under his wing. Stylistically they’re both different form each other, but both just seem like chill dudes who are capable of leaving an impact on the game
I didn’t follow J dub that much until this year. Dude is almost never mentioned in top current players in the league but he belongs in there for sure.
He might be the most likeable player on the team. Not sure why the media would hate him
Let’s run it back. Thunder up ⛈️
I think fans and media especially overstate how important the opinions of the media are to these guys
People like Stephen A and Skip have even tried to take credit for “lighting a fire” under these guys when they do well, which is hilarious, as if professional athletes don’t have family friends coaches and teammates they’re trying to make proud over some loser tv clowns
That is what Stephen A Smith’s show about though isn’t it, a debate?
One person says J.Dub is the goat and the other says he isn’t and go at each other.
Thunder chip #2 incoming. Mark me
Many people say they don’t care but I really believe they do care otherwise they wouldn’t address it
I think everyone here should say what they actually mean: that he’s insecure. I mean, he isn’t, but that’s clearly what all of you think.
You guys think he reads every single bit of criticism about him obsessively like we don’t live in the most interconnected world in human history. Everyone hears everything, there’s nothing wrong with what he’s saying. Get over yourselves.
Stephen Shit Smith
He’s better than Jaylen Brown
the ring that the other dude gave u? just an average player lucky enough to have a great one on the team.
I feel like he put a target on his back from the Kobe stuff, no reason he needed to post any of it when he’s not in the same stratosphere as a player that kobe was. Besides that he’s properly rated, top 10 -15 guy who proved it on the biggest stage
Talk your shit Dub
He showed he is worthy being one of the players keeping Kobes legacy up (Dirk, DeRozan, Tatum, Booker, etc). Propably my least hated OKC player.
WOOF WOOF WOOF
THATS A DAWG RIGHT THERE
*Mickey Mouse ring
there’s negativity because the nba officiated you guys past the nuggets and robbed us of a pacers championship they deserved. we all saw how it was officiated, saw Jalen take 7 steps and still not get called for it… people just dont respect the thunder because they didnt earn it
Lol y’all spend too much time consuming tiktoks instead of actually watching the games.
The Nuggets attempted more free throws than the Thunder and were called for fewer fouls over the course of the series. Did the refs make the Nuggets shoot 10 for 45 from three in game 7?
You’re talking to a brick wall. If you point out the facts people like that move the goalposts and say completely subjective shit like OKC is only called for 20% of the fouls they should be. They just want to be mad and will change the argument every time to fit their bullshit.
My favorites are the ones that think if Hali didn’t rupture his achilles that was an automatic W for the Pacers. They weren’t even winning when the injury happened, but it’s unfathomable to them they could have lost playing a hobbled Hali another 30 mins.
I never use tiktok and was actually AT the games.
then i guess you must have been blindfolded cuz the stats prove you’re wrong
Average NBATalk user when you tell them to watch the game: “Nah, I’ve seen stats”
stats dont always tell the entire story, anyone that knows ball knows that.
except denver had 17 more free throws attempted and 10 less foul calls against them compared to okc. This looks more like the refs tried to skew it for denver dawg
talking about a series, not one game
“I don’t really care. I got a ring”
We got a dumbass over here folks
“The negativity is because the team I wanted to win didnt win” got it
Yea bro that’s like 85% of the nba fanbase bc there team didn’t win they can’t enjoy the game at all and this dude gave you the perfect example of what he was actually upset about it’s that the Pacers who were just not as good as the Thunder lost in a good series and instead of enjoying that he being a lil h* about another team winning the finals fair and square like every team would of had to do.
Nah, its not the media, it’s everyone that watches the NBA that saw OKC get gifted a ring by Scott Foster and the rest of the referees the entire season.
You have to be dumb as hell to actually believe this
They’re a Luka fan that gave up Mavs fandom and switched to LA when he got traded. Rationality is not the strong suit of fans like that.
Damn you right he shouldve mentioned your reddit tag too