Thunder's Gilgeous-Alexander to miss 'significant' time with plantar fasciitis

Oklahoma City Thunder rising star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be sidelined for an extended period of time due to plantar fasciitis in his right foot, Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault announced Wednesday

"I don't want to use 'long-term' because it's vague, but it's not day-to-day," Daigneault told reporters, including KOCO-TV's Bryan Keating. "It's going to be a more significant amount of time than day-to-day. This one is an injury that we need to now take a look at."

Gilgeous-Alexander was ruled out for Wednesday's encounter against the Memphis Grizzlies after playing over 34 minutes in Oklahoma City's win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday.

Daigneault said it appears the injury isn't the result of one specific occurrence but an issue that slowly developed over time.

"He's a higher-minute player that's tracked a lot of miles so far this season after a short offseason, and so we think that that's something that was a little bit cumulative, and that kind of added up and got to this point," he said.

He added: "I don't have a ton of detail on it, to be honest with you. It's happened pretty quickly today. ... It's certainly something that we can say is a cumulative injury, and again, I'll tie it back to the stance we've taken with a lot of this stuff.

"It can sometimes seem like it's overcautious or whatever, but this is exactly what we're trying to avoid, and we're going to continue to be diligent with the whole roster for that reason."

Gilgeous-Alexander, 22, leads Oklahoma City in scoring (23.7 points), assists (5.9), and minutes played (33.7) per game this season. The Canadian guard is in his second full season with the Thunder after the team acquired him from the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2019 trade sending Paul George to L.A.