The words “defense” and “OG Anunoby” tend to go together like shoes and socks, forks and knives or the sun and the moon. You rarely ever hear one uttered without the other. It’s part of a narrative that the New York Knicks forward has earned by consistently being one of the NBA’s best defenders. It’s also a narrative that irritates Anunoby when he hears it.
Because, in his eyes, it’s incomplete.
“Yeah, definitely,” Anunoby quickly answered when asked if he gets tired of being referred to as just a great defender. “I always prided myself on being a two-way player, not just a defender.”
Anunoby has a point. Why don’t we talk about him as one of the league’s most consistent shooters? After all, he’s knocked down 3s at a steady 37.6 percent clip over the last eight years. Why don’t we talk about him as an elite finisher? I mean, he’s usually among the most frequent non-center dunkers in the NBA each year and converts on 74 percent of his attempts around the rim.
Over the last handful of years, no season passes without him scoring 15 points per night or knocking down 3s at an above-average clip. This season, the offense has been just as loud as the defense. Anunoby already has five-plus games to his name where he has scored 20-plus points, and he’s done that playing alongside a top-five MVP candidate from a season ago in Jalen Brunson, one of the best shooting big men of all-time, Karl-Anthony Towns, and new teammate Mikal Bridges, who, too, has grown accustomed to scoring around 20 a night over the last few seasons.
The offensive power that the Knicks have isn’t just opening up opportunities for Anunoby to thrive, he’s one of the driving forces behind it.
“OG is a really good player,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said. “He can shoot the ball, he can move without the ball and he’s good in transition. If you put a small guy on him, he can take him inside. He reads the game well. The awareness of where he is because of the shooting, but when he sees the back of his man’s head, he cuts and relocates extremely well. The constant movement by him is extremely good for us.”
Teammate Josh Hart, who entered the NBA the same season as Anunoby, doesn’t remember when the scouting report was on a young Anunoby in Toronto, but he remembers that he was on it.
“We knew he was a versatile defender, but he was a guy who could knock down shots and was a high-IQ player,” Hart said of the younger version of Anunoby. “He made smart cuts and winning plays on the offensive end.
“Obviously, he’s continued to evolve. We love him in semi-transition or when we got a small on him. … He’s definitely continued to grow offensively.”
Anunoby isn’t doing much new than what he did previously. He’s just mastered what he’s really good at, or is in the process of doing so. As of Monday, Anunoby’s 1.62 points per possession on cuts ranks 12th in the entire league, per NBA.com, when factoring in players who have played a minimum of 10 games this season. Additionally, Anunoby ranks fourth in the NBA in points per possession (1.29) on post-ups. These are all things he’s done successfully in the past, but are just a bit more magnified because of where he plays and his comfortability as a player at this point in his career.
“Even if the numbers aren’t going up, I feel like I’m getting better and better,” Anunoby said.
The biggest difference in Anunoby’s game so far this season is his success rate on deeper 3s. The 27-year-old is trading corner 3s in for more attempts above the break, where he is currently averaging a career-high 3.8 attempts per game and shooting 40 percent. For reference, Anunoby only had one season (2020-21) previous to this one in his career where he both shot at least 3.0 above-the-break 3s per game and converted on at least 37 percent of those takes. Usually, Anunoby hovers around the low 30s in conversion rate in this area.
This is an area Anunoby has been working on with more regularity. Most players have just one scheduled pregame workout before games, but more often than not, Anunboy gets out onto the court to do a pre-pregame routine where he works on his shooting, including deep 3s, while the younger players are out there during their allotted time. His normal pregame routine has featured deeper 3s, too.
The next step for Anunoby, which he slowly has been correcting and really popped in his Sunday-night, 24-point performance against the Brooklyn Nets is getting more 3s up, to have a quicker trigger. His accuracy warrants such confidence. Anunoby has had a knack to turn down good-to-decent looks from 3 in order to try and get a better shot off the dribble. Thibodeau has consistently told Anunoby that he wants him to shoot more from 3. Given his success rate, it’s hard to argue with the logic.
Anunoby agrees with his coach’s assessment.
“I’ve turned down shots,” he said. “I’m trying to stop turning down shots and making it more difficult.”
Anunoby is, arguably, the game’s best two-way player who has yet to make an All-Star appearance.
Half of what makes a great two-way player is on the defensive side of the ball, where everyone and their mother knows Anunoby is among the best in the world. The other half, obviously, is what happens on the offensive end. That’s where Anunoby deserves more credit.
(Photo of Anunoby: Luke Hales / Getty Images)
