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After being without him for much of the regular season, the Oklahoma City Thunder will once again have to adjust to playing without Jalen Williams. One of the Thunder’s primary ballhandlers, Williams suffered a Grade 1 left hamstring strain in Wednesday’s Game 2 win over the Phoenix Suns in their Western Conference first-round series. Oklahoma City leads the series 2-0 heading into Saturday’s Game 3 in Phoenix. The Thunder will be without Williams for at least a week before he’s reevaluated, a diagnosis Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault called a “relatively positive development.” The injury figures to mean a more prominent role for Ajay Mitchell. Mitchell was used little in last season’s championship run, averaging seven minutes per game, with

The Ottawa Senators will be in danger of elimination when they host the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 4 of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series on Saturday afternoon. The Hurricanes, the top seed in the Eastern Conference, went up 3-0 in the series with a 2-1 win over the host Senators on Thursday night. “Just going to keep believing, keep playing our game,” Ottawa forward Tim Stutzle said. “I mean, we scored three goals in three games, so it’s tough to win like that, and we just got to find a way.” Carolina will be trying to win at least one round in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the sixth consecutive season. “We’re feeling good about ourselves, but you know, the

The Detroit Pistons almost were unrecognizable for the first six quarters of their first-round series against the Orlando Magic, but that all changed in the span of about eight minutes. The top-seeded Pistons appear to have finally settled in as they head into Game 3 against the eighth-seeded Magic on Saturday in Orlando, Fla. After losing its playoff opener 112-101, Detroit evened the best-of-seven Eastern Conference clash with an impressive 98-83 win on Wednesday. Cade Cunningham had 27 points, 11 assists and six rebounds to lead Detroit, which was tied at the half before opening the third quarter on a 30-3 run over a span of eight minutes. Coach J.B. Bickerstaff provided some well-timed advice at halftime to help the

The New York Knicks held a comfortable lead for most of their Game 1 win last weekend. Since then, the Atlanta Hawks have made things massively uncomfortable for an opponent with aspirations of a deep postseason run. The pressure is intensifying for the Knicks, who will look to even up the first-round playoff series Saturday night when they visit the Hawks for Game 4. “The reality of it is, it’s a seven-game series for a reason,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said after Jalen Brunson’s turnover with 1.2 seconds left ended a 109-108 loss in Game 3 on Thursday. “Stuff’s going to happen. Plenty of teams have been down 1-2, even OKC was down 1-2 last year and they ended up