OG Anunoby is an NBA champion. That will never be taken away from him, even if the history books don’t tell the whole story.
As a second-year forward with the Toronto Raptors, the up-and-coming Anunoby played a big role primarily off the bench for Canada’s team as it earned 58 wins and the No. 2 seed during the regular season. Right before the playoffs, however, Anunoby underwent an emergency appendectomy, forcing him to miss the entire playoff run that culminated in the Raptors winning their first championship.
“Of course I wanted to play,” Anunoby told The Athletic. “I wish I played, but I also learned a lot.”
Anunoby, despite being robbed of an opportunity that some players 15 years his senior never got to experience, remembers that time fondly. He looks back and reflects on all that he learned from his teammates about how to be a pro, how to prepare at the sport’s highest level. The players on that team were so influential on who Anunoby is today that he wanted to list the entire roster, as many as he could recall while put on the spot, to show appreciation for what that experience meant to him as he sat on the sideline and they went to fight on his behalf.
“Jeremy Lin was a great teammate,” Anunoby said. “I had Jodie Meeks, Norm Powell, Fred VanVleet, Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka, Kyle Lowry, Kawhi Leonard, Pascal Siakam and Danny Green. I learned a lot from those guys. I learned so much being out.”
Anunoby has since progressed from a ball of potential and is now a full-blown dawg with the New York Knicks. He’s on the doorstep of his second NBA championship. And he’s been playing as if he’s making up for the run he missed out on back in 2019. This postseason, Anunoby is averaging 19.7 points while shooting an absurd 57.7 percent from the field and an even more absurd 48.3 percent from 3. He’s second on the team in steals and blocks per game. The Knicks are in the midst of the most dominant postseason run ever, and it’s largely because Anunoby has been equally as dominant in his role.
OG Anunoby, guarding Donovan Mitchell in Monday’s Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, earned his second Second-Team All-Defensive honor this season. (Ken Blaze / Imagn Images)
There was a worry that Anunoby would once again miss a significant amount of time in the playoffs due to injury. He aggravated his hamstring in Game 2 of a second-round matchup against the Philadelphia 76ers. Anunoby would end up missing only two games and returned only to pick up right where he left off.
“He’s locked in and doing all of things we know he’s capable of,” Jalen Brunson said after Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, a night on which Anunoby had 21 points, seven rebounds and four assists. “He’s doing what he does. He’s playing great.”
The 28-year-old has spent the last several seasons breaking free of the “3-and-D wing” label many tried to stick on him and has evolved into one of the best two-way players on planet Earth. These playoffs, he’s turned into Kawhi Leonard with a slight English accent. Offensively, the London-born, Missouri-raised Anunoby has barely missed. Dunks. 3s. Layups. It’s all there. Defensively, Anunoby is more like a shutdown cornerback than he is anything that makes sense in basketball terms. Teams sometimes avoid his side of the floor entirely because of his ability to pounce on ballhandlers when they’re anywhere near him and his ability to bait opponents into thinking a pass is open when it isn’t.
Why did Darrell Revis have only 29 interceptions over an 11-year career? Because quarterbacks were terrified to throw anywhere near him. That’s the type of impact Anunoby has defensively. His presence on that end of the floor was acknowledged this year, as he was named to the NBA’s All-Defensive Second Team. It was the second time he’s earned All-Defensive honors in his nine-year career.
That stat feels like a sham in itself. It’s hard to name 10 defenders better than Anunoby when he’s healthy. The stats don’t always show his impact because, as mentioned, he’s similar to a shutdown corner. Teams don’t test Anunoby more than they have to.
“You can all print this: Great players out there, I’m not discounting anybody, but freakin’ OG got robbed,” coach Mike Brown said. “He should have been First-Team All-Defense. The versatility that he brings to this team … we’re a top-five defensive team. The versatility that this guy brings to this team is off the charts. I hope the voters get it right the next time around. I’m happy he’s Second Team because he deserves something, but it was wrong.”
If Brunson is a knockout puncher, leaving opponents on the mat with devastating haymakers that turn the lights out, Anunoby specializes in body blows. He’s got the type of game you feel the next morning, the type of game that leaves you wondering if air will return to your trachea.
Just when defenses believe they’ve got Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns under control, here comes Anunoby with a series of backbreaking 3s. Just when defenses force someone other than the Knicks’ stars to dribble, here comes Anunoby on the baseline going up for a two-hand dunk. On the other end, Anunoby pounces like a leopard on the hunt for dinner. His ability to close driving lanes is part of what has made New York’s defense so special throughout these playoffs and the second half of the regular season.
Anunoby is overqualified as a “third banana.” Yet, that is why the Knicks are so dangerous in these playoffs. Anunoby can take over a game some nights the same way some of the league’s recognized elite can. He just does it on both ends of the floor.
“OG’s been unbelievable,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse, his former coach in Toronto, said during his team’s second-round matchup against New York. “He’s been amazing in these playoffs, both in the Atlanta series and this series. He has been as good as I’ve ever seen him. He just keeps getting better and better, and it’s a testament to (the work). He guards every position. The shooting has always been great, and now his cutting game is great. Once he dribbles inside the line, you used to think, ‘Let’s force him inside the line and see what happens,’ but now he’s dunking on people and hitting that 17-footer. He’s been doing everything at a super-high level.”
The Knicks are four wins away from the NBA title. And if Anunoby keeps this up, more championship history will follow with him on the roster. Only this time, he’ll be a catalyst as opposed to an observer.
