Jalen Williams: They told me—and I don’t want to make this a “Kobe thing”—but he was someone they brought up who had played through it. So it was doable. That week, I worked on changing my jump shot to shoot in a way that relied only on my fingertips, with no follow-through. I practiced that for about six days. Then we decided on a cortisone shot and a lidocaine shot. I started practicing with those, and you’ll see a time-lapse of that in the video. I got lidocaine shots before every single playoff game and sometimes mid-week too, just so I could keep working on my jumper. I also tried different tape jobs, coming in after practice to experiment with what would let me dribble without flexing my hand. Big shoutout to the medical team—the doctors, Donnie, Toby, everyone across the street that helped. They were huge throughout the playoffs. We played the Memphis series first. My hand held up okay. The good thing about that series was we only had a day between games, so I didn’t have to deal with stiffness as much. -via YouTube / July 9, 2025
