Knicks' OG Anunoby earns more praise after Game 4 tip-in brings team to brink of NBA title
SAN ANTONIO — OG Anunoby walked into the huge media room, a place where he seems far less comfortable than under the theater lights of the floor at Madison Square Garden. As he stepped onto the stage, Josh Hart was walking off. He stopped and hugged Anunoby.
“His game was crazy,” Hart said. “I’ve got a special shout-out for OG, man, because he saved me, at least for this game, a lifetime of regret. So yeah, man, shout-out to him.”
Hart spoke for the entire crowd, with both the hug and the words. Anunoby saved Hart from having to think about the final minutes.
Hart stole a pass with the Knicks down by a point with two minutes left, but when he raced down the floor, he got caught between layup and dunk and bounced it off the back of the rim.
Then, after Jalen Brunson gave the Knicks a one-point lead with 1:22 left, De’Aaron Fox misfired on a jumper. But when Hart lost Stephon Castle for just a moment, Castle grabbed the offensive rebound and was fouled. He sank both free throws to give the Spurs a 106-105 lead with 30.3 seconds left.
But Anunoby took Hart off the hook and set off a wild celebration at the Garden with a pair of plays that will be commemorated on the walls of the concourse, where tributes to the great moments in Knicks history reside.
When the speedy Fox grabbed a loose ball and drove to the hoop, Anunoby chased him down and blocked his shot from behind with 11.1 seconds left. Then, after throwing an inbounds pass, Anunoby carved a path through the lane, darted in and rose above defenders to tip in Brunson’s missed three-pointer with 1.2 seconds left. That ended up deciding the game and setting off a sound that shook the entire arena.
“Right hand from God,” Karl-Anthony Towns said with a smile.
When Anunoby sat down for his media session, he was asked what it felt like to deliver the go-ahead shot.
“It feels cool,” he said quietly. “I mean, everyone’s pretty excited. I’m excited, too.”
The room burst out in laughter because Anunoby doesn’t show excitement, prompting him to break out into a big smile. Even when he dropped in the tip-in, he slid to the baseline, got up and barely cracked a smile as he jogged back to the Knicks’ bench with the team huddled up for one more stop.
When the final buzzer sounded and Anunoby stood for a quick on-court interview, Towns — again speaking for the crowd — came up behind him shouting “I love you!”
“Unbelievable,” Mikal Bridges said. “He’s different, man. I’m happy he’s on my team.”
Anunoby easily could be the Most Valuable Player of this series. His 33-point performance was his latest standout effort and another opportunity for the Knicks’ front office to offer up an “I told you so” in a look back at the moves that built this team.
The Towns trade with Minnesota isn’t debated anymore and no one seems to care about the first-round picks the team gave up for Bridges. And there is no question about the deal that brought Anunoby from Toronto in a trade that gave up RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley, cornerstone pieces of the team’s rebuild.
In Toronto, Anunoby was part of a championship team in 2019 — he’s the only player on the Knicks’ roster with a championship ring — but he didn’t play a minute in the postseason that year after undergoing an emergency appendectomy. Now he finds himself as the most consistent force for a team trying to win its first title since 1973.
Knicks coach Mike Brown has openly campaigned for Anunoby to win postseason awards and was upset that he was voted to only the All-Defense second team this season. But nights like Wednesday certainly will raise his profile. He saved the Knicks on the biggest stage.
“I challenged a lot of our guys today, and OG was one of the guys I challenged,” Brown said. “I told OG, as big, as strong, as athletic as he is, he’s got to be a monster on the offensive glass tonight. I don’t know if there was a play bigger than [that] in the history of Knicks basketball.”
It actually was Anunoby’s only offensive rebound, but it came in the biggest spot, securing a place for him in Knicks lore.
“OG, he’s been amazing since he’s got here,” Hart said. “This whole playoff run, he’s been amazing on both ends of the ball. He’s a winning player and he made a winning play.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
