A year ago, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams were being talked about like one of the league’s true hammer-and-anvil duos. They helped push the Thunder to a championship in 2025, and for a moment it felt like the conversation around Oklahoma City’s top two had settled.
It hasn’t.
CBS’ latest ranking of the NBA’s best duos puts Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams at No. 4, behind Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, and Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. That drop says plenty about how the league views the Thunder pairing now, especially with one half of the duo coming off back-to-back MVPs.
The gap, at least in CBS’ eyes, comes down to the second options. Gilgeous-Alexander can stack up with just about anybody at the top of the league. The real issue is that Williams no longer looks like he belongs in the same tier as the other elite No. 2s.
Brunson is the cleanest comparison point, and the source material makes the case that SGA has him beat. There’s even an argument that Gilgeous-Alexander has moved ahead of Jokic, which would leave Towns and Murray as the stronger supporting stars in this specific ranking. That’s the heart of the ranking: CBS appears to believe the advantage those teams get from their second stars is enough to keep Oklahoma City behind them.
Wembanyama is the only player in the group who could be considered better than Gilgeous-Alexander outright, and even that isn’t a lock. If CBS does give Wembanyama the edge, then the margin between Castle and Williams would have to be tiny to justify the Thunder duo landing below San Antonio’s pairing.
For Williams, it’s a sharp fall from where his reputation sat before last season. Bleacher Report had him as the 15th-best player in the NBA heading into the year, but his disappointing 2025-26 campaign changed the conversation fast. His standing has taken a hit, and he’ll head into the new season with plenty to prove.
That kind of noise can cut both ways. Right now, it reads like a rough verdict on the Thunder wing.
But it also sets up a player who should have no shortage of motivation when the new season opens. If Williams can close the gap on the league’s other top second options, that could end up mattering just as much as anything Gilgeous-Alexander does at the top of the lineup.
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