The OKC veteran tied his career high with an outstanding defensive performance against the Pelicans

OKLAHOMA CITY — With injuries to half of head coach Mark Daigneault’s rotation, Oklahoma City Thunder center Jaylin Williams had a career night in Tuesday’s 104-95 win over the New Orleans Pelicans. After the game clock has expired, tempers flared between Lou Dort and Jeremiah Fears. Williams helped calm things down on a night where he finished with a career-high five blocks. It was a tough finish to three games at home.

The Thunder finished 1-2 after losing two straight to the Indiana Pacers and Toronto Raptors. Without Jaylen Williams, Isaiah Hartenstein, Alex Caruso, Ajay Mitchell and Cason Wallace, Jaylen finished with 10 rebounds, five assists and two points while he and Chet Holmgren (20 points) combined for 24 rebounds, nine blocks and eight assists.

After the game, Holmgren talked about how the Thunder are doing defensive suffocation helped the limitation The Pelicans’ top scorers, such as Trey Murphy III, who started the game 0-for-7 and finished with 10 points on 3-for-20 shooting.

“First of all, kudos to those guys who put their bodies in front of Zion, taking straights in the cup. They can do it because I make sure they know I’ve got their back,” Holmgren said. “I’m back there behind them, like everybody else on the floor. I’m just trying to do a good job of having everyone’s back, but not losing sight of the whole floor and giving up the easy ones.”

Zion Williamson led the Pelicans with 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting.

“I feel like we got Zion in the four- to eight-foot range and he was still making those shots,” Holmgren added. “But good players are going to make shots, but we couldn’t give up layups and dunks all night long for everybody.”

Jaylin Williams averaged 6.0 rebounds, 3.6 points and 2.0 blocks in 23.3 minutes over the Thunder’s three home games. Tuesday’s win against the Pelicans was his second straight start.

Aaron Wiggins sees ‘opportunity’ after Thunder loss

Thunder Keeper Aaron Wiggins knows there are still plenty of games left in the regular season. He reminded of that fact after two consecutive losses of the defending champions at home, which has not happened since 2023. However, as Wiggins reminded, the Thunder still hold the best record in the NBA, which reminds him of the big picture of the regular season.

“You can’t get caught up in the moment or a small sample of games that maybe didn’t work out for you,” Wiggins said. “We’re talking about two losses in a row, but we’re 37-10 right now. In that sense, just realizing we’ve got literally 40-50 games left. So we’ve got a lot of time to get better.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for us to continue to grow and learn from our losses and our wins. And we can’t take last night’s loss with us into tomorrow’s game. So we’ve got to make sure we move on, and just learn what we can and be ready to go.”

The Thunder improved to 38-10.