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<\/p>\nOG Anunoby is an NBA champion. That will never be taken away from him, even if the history books don\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n
As a second-year forward with the Toronto Raptors, the up-and-coming Anunoby played a big role primarily off the bench for Canada\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course I wanted to play,\u201d Anunoby told The Athletic. \u201cI wish I played, but I also learned a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeremy Lin was a great teammate,\u201d Anunoby said. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anunoby has since progressed from a ball of potential and is now a full-blown dawg with the New York Knicks. He\u2019s on the doorstep of his second NBA championship. And he\u2019s been playing as if he\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s largely because Anunoby has been equally as dominant in his role.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n OG Anunoby, guarding Donovan Mitchell in Monday\u2019s Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, earned his second Second-Team All-Defensive honor this season. (Ken Blaze \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s locked in and doing all of things we know he\u2019s capable of,\u201d Jalen Brunson said after Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, a night on which Anunoby had 21 points, seven rebounds and four assists. \u201cHe\u2019s doing what he does. He\u2019s playing great.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old has spent the last several seasons breaking free of the \u201c3-and-D wing\u201d label many tried to stick on him and has evolved into one of the best two-way players on planet Earth. These playoffs, he\u2019s turned into Kawhi Leonard with a slight English accent. Offensively, the London-born, Missouri-raised Anunoby has barely missed. Dunks. 3s. Layups. It\u2019s 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\u2019re anywhere near him and his ability to bait opponents into thinking a pass is open when it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Why did Darrell Revis have only 29 interceptions over an 11-year career? Because quarterbacks were terrified to throw anywhere near him. That\u2019s 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\u2019s All-Defensive Second Team. It was the second time he\u2019s earned All-Defensive honors in his nine-year career.<\/p>\n
That stat feels like a sham in itself. It\u2019s hard to name 10 defenders better than Anunoby when he\u2019s healthy. The stats don\u2019t always show his impact because, as mentioned, he\u2019s similar to a shutdown corner. Teams don\u2019t test Anunoby more than they have to.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can all print this: Great players out there, I\u2019m not discounting anybody, but freakin\u2019 OG got robbed,\u201d coach Mike Brown said. \u201cHe should have been First-Team All-Defense. The versatility that he brings to this team \u2026 we\u2019re 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\u2019m happy he\u2019s Second Team because he deserves something, but it was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Just when defenses believe they\u2019ve 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\u2019 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\u2019s defense so special throughout these playoffs and the second half of the regular season.<\/p>\n
Anunoby is overqualified as a \u201cthird banana.\u201d 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\u2019s recognized elite can. He just does it on both ends of the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cOG\u2019s been unbelievable,\u201d 76ers coach Nick Nurse, his former coach in Toronto, said during his team\u2019s second-round matchup against New York. \u201cHe\u2019s been amazing in these playoffs, both in the Atlanta series and this series. He has been as good as I\u2019ve ever seen him. He just keeps getting better and better, and it\u2019s 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, \u2018Let\u2019s force him inside the line and see what happens,\u2019 but now he\u2019s dunking on people and hitting that 17-footer. He\u2019s been doing everything at a super-high level.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019ll be a catalyst as opposed to an observer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OG Anunoby is an NBA champion. That will never be taken away from him, even if the history…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,361,99],"class_list":["post-669978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}