Who Should Fill In For Jalen Williams in OKC Thunder Starting Lineup

The Oklahoma City Thunder are set to embark on their first regular season as NBA champions. The Thunder are the heavy favorites to repeat as NBA Champions and are attempting to buck the recent trend of parity in the NBA. For the past seven year's the league has crowned seven new champions. The past six have failed to even more it past the second round. The NBA hasn't seen a repeat winner since the 2018 Golden State Warriors. Truly unprecedented times in this league.

However, if anyone can curb that trend, it is the Thunder. Oklahoma City was the second youngest team in league history to win a championship and still sees this core evolving as players with the expectation that they will be even better this season.

Even ring night has not been kind to the reigning champions and Oklahoma City has their work cut out for them against the Houston Rockets. Not only are the Rockets one of the Western Conference's best squads but the Thunder must go to work tonight without All-Star and All-NBA swingman Jalen Williams.

His lack of versatility defensively will be a massive hole against this jumbo-sized Rockets club. Missing his bucket-getting ability will hamper Oklahoma City's secondary unit offensively.

There is also a massive hole left behind in the Thunder's starting lineup. It is expected that when healthy Mark Daigneault will roll out a first five of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lu Dort, Williams, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein.

So who should step up and replace the Santa Clara product in that lineup? With Isaiah Joe also in street clothes, it leaves three true candidates in Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace and Aaron Wiggins. To this point, the Thunder have very rarely started Caruso in his Bricktown tenure. While Wallace and Wiggins have often earned spot starts due to injuries.

However, going up against a Rockets starting five of Amen Thompson-Kevin Durant-Jabari Smith Jr.-Alperen Sengun-Steven Adams, the Thunder need size and defensive versatility. Caruso's ability to defend bigger bodies at a high level makes him the perfect fit to be inserted into the starting five tonight.

This leaves Wallace off the bench alongside Ajay Mitchell to help handle playmaking duties while Wiggins will serve as that unit's bonafide bucket getter in an attempt to replace Williams' production at all fronts.

While the All-defensive swingman is impossible to perfectly recreate, this formula would allow Oklahoma City to play as close to their normal style as possible.