{"id":139814,"date":"2026-02-20T10:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T10:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/139814\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T10:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T10:38:14","slug":"og-anunoby-has-nightmarish-knicks-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/139814\/","title":{"rendered":"OG Anunoby has nightmarish Knicks return"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cade Cunningham got around Mikal Bridges, crossed up Mitchell Robinson then dunked all over Karl-Anthony Towns. <\/p>\n

He flexed for a second and yelled at a Madison Square Garden crowd that he was sucking the life out of.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sharing a floor with Jalen Brunson, this time around it wasn\u2019t even close who the best player on the court was. <\/p>\n

He probably won\u2019t win it this year, but Cunningham looked like an MVP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He finished with 42 points, 13 assists and eight rebounds in the Pistons\u2019 126-111 thrashing of the Knicks<\/a> on Thursday night, moving New York to 0-3 against Detroit this year.<\/p>\n

Most troublingly, OG Anunoby was the Knicks\u2019 primary defender on Cunningham and provided almost no resistance, particularly during a third quarter in which Cunningham took over the game. <\/p>\n

He scored 11 straight Pistons points during one stretch in that third quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cunningham shot 57.1 percent when Anunoby was matched up with him, per NBA Courtside\u2019s tracking stats. <\/p>\n

\"CadeOG Anunoby defends during the Knicks\u2019 loss to the Pistons on Feb. 19, 2026. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Knicks coach Mike Brown tried Josh Hart and Jose Alvarado on Cunningham later in the fourth quarter, but the results were not much different.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anunoby left before the locker room was opened to the media.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can do a lot for a guy his size and puts teams in predicaments with the stuff that he\u2019s doing because really your guy is [6-foot-2], 6-1 and is on a guy who is 6-7 doing it,\u201d Brown said of Cunningham. \u201cAnd you\u2019re putting a small forward on him. Most of the time the small forward isn\u2019t used to navigating the stuff that he does on the floor.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the Knicks made a mini-run to cut the deficit to 12 points with just under five minutes left in the game, Cunningham drilled a stepback trey to remove any little suspense that was still lingering in the arena.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the Knicks\u2019 biggest defensive adjustments before the All-Star break<\/a> was keeping the ball out of the middle and forcing it to the sidelines. <\/p>\n

But Cunningham forced them back into bad habits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to try to keep the ball off the middle of the floor,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnd we didn\u2019t do a good job of it. We allowed him to get to the middle of the floor often. And when he got to the middle of the floor he hurt us. So we have to do a better job of trying to keep the ball on the sidelines and not allowing it to get to the middle of the floor.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anunoby missed the last four games before the All-Star break with a right toenail avulsion. <\/p>\n

He had his entire toenail removed and is still in pain, he said previously, with it still being an open wound.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"CadeCade Cunningham attempts a shot during the Knicks\u2019 Feb. 19 loss to the Pistons. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n

And Thursday was a nightmarish return to the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other than his defensive no-show, he had a brutal shooting night. <\/p>\n

He recorded just eight points on 3-for-13 shooting from the field and 1-for-8 shooting from 3-point range.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

As a team, the Knicks went just 8-for-35 from deep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a great job of generating some wide-open looks, especially from the 3-point line,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey just didn\u2019t go in tonight.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

No, they certainly didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

It seemed all of Cunningham\u2019s did, however \u2014 particularly against Anunoby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cade Cunningham got around Mikal Bridges, crossed up Mitchell Robinson then dunked all over Karl-Anthony Towns. He flexed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19719,1267,21,9,11,1104,10,6474,319],"class_list":["post-139814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-cade-cunningham","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-new-york-news","tag-og-anunoby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}