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The sun cuts across the desert sky like a painter’s last brushstroke, bleeding orange and pink into the horizon. Gilbert, AZ, is buzzing in a quiet way, a suburban thrum wrapped in dry heat and open skies. At Perry High School, the doors are unlocked, and the basketball gym is brimming with echoes of excellence. The Perry Pumas have been one of the most dominant programs in the state for decades and are fresh off their fourth consecutive Arizona state championship. Ironically, however, the best player in program history never won a chip during his time there. Today, he’s back, gracing the empty gym with quiet familiarity. And for the first time, he’s on this court as a champion. An NBA champion. Jalen Williams is home.
The 24-year-old All-Star who helped Oklahoma City climb to the mountaintop, who carved out space on one of the most talented young rosters in basketball, who just months ago stood on a championship stage, is back where his legend began. And fittingly, it’s where we meet for his first-ever solo SLAM cover shoot.
“High school [was] a big, big moment in my life,” he says. “I always try and come back here. This gym holds a lot of memories, a lot of buckets, so it’s always cool to work out here, and just doing the shoot here is really cool.”
In an era where top players were bouncing from school to school, wearing sometimes four different jerseys in as many years, Jalen was loyal to the soil. He stayed down, riding with Perry for the entirety of his high school career, even when the path wasn’t always peachy. That steadfastness is a testament to his character and a recurring theme in his journey. This past June, Perry returned that loyalty in kind, renaming Brock Perry Way, right outside the high school, to Jalen Williams Way at the start of the NBA Finals.
But long before street signs bore his name, before sellout crowds in Oklahoma City’s raucous Paycom Arena roared for him, basketball was stitched into his upbringing. From around the age of 8 until he was about 14, he played with a local club team called the Sting, practicing at the Boys & Girls Club in Guadalupe, AZ. Those early runs planted the roots of his love for the game. And as is the case with so many hoopers of this generation, his earliest memories of falling for basketball involve the late, great Kobe Bryant.
“We used to cut practice short to watch the NBA Finals on this big couch, and I always remember Kobe and the Celtics and whoever was playing,” Dub recalls. “I think that drives a lot of my love of basketball, because that’s one of my earlier memories where I can really remember everything that happened.”
That love for the game carried him through tireless hours in the gym, which translated to him becoming a killer on the court. Yet, by the time he finished at Perry, Jalen wasn’t a headline name in recruiting circles. Far from it, in fact. On most recruiting services, his rating capped out as a three-star: talented, no question, but largely invisible to the spotlight that chases typical blue-chip prospects.
Not to mention, Jalen, who now stands 6-5, was barely 6-feet tall halfway through his high school career. His high school coach Sam Duane Jr., who got the job at the end of Jalen’s freshman season, remembers the very first time he laid eyes on the young then-point guard. “I walked in that spring of his freshman year and had some open gyms and I saw him, and he was about 5-11,” Duane told AZ Family sports reporter Mark McClune on a recent episode of his “The Extra Point” podcast. “[Jalen’s] a guy that when you were out there watching him play with confidence and the skills he had, you opened your eyes to him. But to see where he is now is just amazing.
“I don’t think people realize how much time Jalen puts into his game, as he did then,” Duane continued. “He was always a gym rat, always working on his game. And then as he started to grow, his body started catching up to his work ethic, so you could see that the sky was the limit.”
Still, even as his frame filled out and he inched toward his 10,000 hours, offers from top programs never materialized, leaving him to take the road less traveled. Jalen ultimately landed at mid-major Santa Clara University. In his freshman year, he had carved out a permanent spot in the starting lineup just 10 games in. As a sophomore, he returned stronger, better, earning honorable mention All-WCC honors—and he was just hitting his stride when the season was abruptly cut short by Covid. In an era when players chase greener pastures through the transfer portal without batting an eye, Jalen surely could have sought a bigger stage. But once again…loyalty. He returned for his junior season, and it was at this exact point that his lifelong NBA dream crystallized into a concrete goal.
“I think college is kind of like your last chance of getting [to the NBA]. So college made it a lot more serious,” he says. “To pinpoint—my junior year, just being at school, playing well, that’s when it started to become a goal.”
By the time his junior season wrapped, this goal was all but a foregone conclusion. Jalen was a First Team All-WCC selection, and NBA scouts were flying up the coast to see him in person, enamored by his wingspan, his IQ, his ability to shape-shift on both ends of the floor. Jalen forewent his senior year and entered his name in the 2022 NBA draft.
By the time the draft arrived, it had been 26 years since Santa Clara produced an NBA selection—the last being two-time MVP and Hall of Fame point guard Steve Nash, taken at No. 15. Oklahoma City called Jalen’s name at No. 12, a spot that already feels criminally low. In a redraft of that class today, he wouldn’t slip past the top three. Not that he’s losing any sleep over it.
“I think what everybody fails to realize is that the draft is about situations. A player, in hindsight, can be better, quote unquote, than somebody else, but you got to look at what the team needs,” he says. “So I feel like [with] my draft, a lot of it made sense. I’m really happy with where I went, especially now, obviously, winning a championship there.”
Jalen quite literally couldn’t have landed in a better spot than Oklahoma City. General manager Sam Presti’s intentionality was about stacking versatile talent, about finding players who could morph and adapt, who could contribute to something bigger than themselves. Jalen didn’t just fit the mold, he became the mold. And while reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is obviously the engine that makes the team go, at the heart of Thunder culture is Jalen—steady, reliable, magnetic. That foundation is what carried OKC into its improbable, unforgettable chase for a championship.
With an average age of 25.6 years, they were the second-youngest championship team in League history. So maybe the whole “maturity” thing in basketball is a little overstated.
“I don’t think you need a bunch of veterans to be successful,” Jalen suggests. “I think they’re definitely useful. But…I learned how to be a professional before I even signed paperwork to be on the Thunder. You go in there, and every single basketball on the ball rack is facing the exact same way; we tuck our shirts in for practice; we’re not wearing jewelry for practice. That stuff was ingrained in me since I’ve been in the organization. So we haven’t had to have vets teach us how to do things. We matured faster, because that’s the environment that we’ve been in.”
The Thunder’s 2025 title run still feels like a fever dream to much of the League. Built around a core of precocious, selfless stars, they embodied a kind of basketball purity that felt like it was from another era: ball movement, defense, trust. Everything just clicked at the right time.
Case in point: Dub’s clutch Game 5 performance in the Finals, truly the performance of a lifetime.
Jalen dropped a 40-piece—mind you, with a torn ligament in his shooting wrist that he suffered earlier in the playoffs. Every shot, every drive, every trip to the line was a battle against his own body, but he never let the pain leak through. No wincing, no theatrics. Just a stoic defiance, as if he understood that what his squad needed in that moment had nothing to do with excuses, and everything to do with a will to win.
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For three years, Jalen had been steadily proving himself—an All-Star, a rising name in the League, a core piece of the Thunder organization. But this Game 5 was different. Somewhere between the third-quarter barrage and the dagger pull-up in the final minute, a quiet truth settled in. None of this was fleeting. This was the foundation of a career meant to last. It wasn’t the first time he proved he belonged. It was, however, the first time he realized himself that he was here to stay. Jalen will likely have more performances like this throughout his career, but when all is said and done, this Game 5 will likely stand as the epitome of who he is as a player.
“The first time I thought that I was going to play in the NBA for a long time was probably Game 5 of the Finals…I haven’t had a moment in the NBA where I felt that way, up until the 40-ball,” he says.
In listening to Jalen discuss his journey, there’s a humility. Even as he reflects on being drafted in the lottery, on hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy, he’s tethered to the kid version of himself—
the one who believed, quietly, that he could make it, even if no one else really did. Now that he’s made it, he’s become one of the easiest players in the League to root for.
“To see how loyal he is—to see him now reap the benefits of the sacrifice he put in, that’s the fun part for me,” his high school coach recently told a reporter at the unveiling of Jalen Williams Way.
For Jalen, the climb to the top is all the confirmation that the long road was worth it.
“Don’t worry about what everybody else has going on, that’s when you get distracted,” he says. “You can’t count other people’s blessings. You have to lock in on yourself and wherever that road takes you. Trust what you’re doing, and everything else will fall into place how it’s supposed to.”
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