NEW YORK — OG Anunoby required only a glimpse at a freeze frame to figure out what was next.
Opened up on a laptop in front of him was a play from a months-old game, the New York Knicks’ second matchup of the season. The video clip was paused at the start, showing a few Indiana Pacers players 90 feet from their own basket about to corral an unremarkable rebound. And still, Anunoby narrated what was about to occur.
“Ahh, the Nembhard stunt,” he mused before beginning a recent film study with The Athletic.
Anunoby cemented himself years ago as one of the league’s top defenders, a menace especially away from the basketball, where he can wall off an entire side of the court. His specialty is the type of ambush he was about to watch.
The move, as Anunoby mentioned, is called a “stunt.” A driver will hit the lane with Anunoby defending someone else on the wing. But dribblers attack his area at their own risk. Anunoby will step toward them, reaching for the rock, sometimes swiping it away and other times disrupting their flow.
Thanks to his size, speed and instincts, no one stunts quite like Anunoby.
“It’s a scary sight. Not gonna lie,” teammate Jalen Brunson said. “When you see someone like that lunging at you with bad intentions, it’s scary.”
Anunoby was about to review two examples of what those bad intentions can do to offenses: One play that resulted in a steal and another that froze Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, a high-IQ contributor to a top-10 offense.
During the first quarter of the Indiana game, Nembhard received a pass and drove left against Knicks wing Mikal Bridges. “Mikal does a good job of not letting him go straight,” Anunoby said as he locked in on the video. Once Nembhard gets to the left side of the free-throw line, referred to by true basketball sickos as “the nail,” it’s Anunoby’s time to pounce.
“I got a steal,” Anunoby said. “Pascal (Siakam) kneed me in the head. I remember that.”
But Anunoby remembering a steal or a knee to the noggin is not unusual, even if the play in question was more than 40 games ago. The former All-Defense member, who has a chance of earning the same accolade in 2024-25, can reel off the details of thefts he has no business recalling.
Leading into games, Anunoby will study his upcoming assignment’s every possession from the previous few contests. He spends his off-nights watching NBA bouts, flipping from matchup to matchup and filing away mental notes about other players’ tendencies. He doesn’t write them down, nor is writing them down necessary.
Especially if Anunoby is involved in a play, a heist here or a swat there, the details don’t exit his brain.
Let’s quiz him impromptu, without giving him a heads up or any time to think it through.
Does he remember, just to choose a game at random, how many steals he had when the Knicks played the Cleveland Cavaliers in October? And, if so, how did they develop?
“There was a steal,” Anunoby responded without hesitation. “Caris (LeVert) drove, threw to the corner with a minute left and we scored.”
There was actually a little more than a minute to go when Anunoby picked off that pass, but we can round down. Otherwise, he nailed it. He’s 1-for-1.
Let’s try another, an example from longer ago. How about any steals from his first-ever game with the Knicks, a win over the Minnesota Timberwolves last January?
“I got a steal on a Rudy (Gobert) lob in the corner,” Anunoby said. “I was guarding Naz (Reid), I think. I came over, stole it, tipped it. And then I had a steal with Ant (Edwards) in the fourth quarter. (He was coming) off a screen, and I deflected it.”
Darn. Correct on every detail again.
Let’s make this more difficult. How about an inconsequential game from more than two years ago? Try 2022, when he was still with the Toronto Raptors, the first time he faced the Brooklyn Nets that season?
“I remember the blocks,” Anunoby said. “Kyrie (Irving) tried to iso me. He took a shot. I blocked it. They got the ball back and took a jumper, and his foot fell on me. He made the shot.”
He added extra detail just to show off.
“I was wearing a right calf sleeve, black shoes,” Anunoby said, unable to hold back a smirk.
This skill is one of Anunoby’s pride points, as is the level of defense it begets.
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The Knicks have hovered around the middle of the pack in points allowed per possession all season, but Anunoby is the group’s backbone. New York doesn’t play with a conventional rim protector. Instead it’s on him, along with the other two starting wings, Bridges and Josh Hart, to lock down the perimeter.
Bridges most often mans the point of attack. Anunoby battles with larger forwards, sometimes chasing them around screens, sometimes lurking in the corner, an essential role inside a Tom Thibodeau defense, which places a heavy burden on defenders in that area to help into the lane on drivers, then race back to spot-up shooters. And sometimes, Anunoby is on the wings, ready to raid anyone who approaches.
For the sixth consecutive season, his team allows fewer points per possession when he’s on the court. This year, unlike in some others, he’s remained healthy, participating in all 45 of the Knicks’ games thus far.
He’s an unusual fit inside a Thibodeau team. The Knicks head coach believes each defender’s responsibility comes first, second and third to his own assignment. Players scrambling out of position to chase steals is not his cup of tea. It’s no wonder Thibodeau’s defenses, though usually high-ranked, don’t often force many turnovers. Those are not the priority.
Anunoby will get caught gambling every once in a while, straying too far off his man, which leads to an open shot or puts the Knicks in rotation. No coincidence, New York gives up more corner 3s when he’s on the court. But in basketball, unlike in Vegas, the house does not always win.
“You want him to be himself and take advantage of the strengths that he has, but you also have to build team responsibilities,” Thibodeau said. “You can’t just randomly run around and do things. If your teammates don’t know what you’re doing, then you’re gonna expose the entire team. So it’s making sure that you fulfill team responsibilities and then go from there and use your instincts.”
Thibodeau trusts Anunoby. And that’s why the 6-foot-7 wing — someone the coach will throw on players of any size, from tiny guards to mammoth centers — has the freedom to try the stunt he did with Nembhard, a clip that wasn’t chosen by accident.
Anunoby’s steal on Nembhard occurred during the first quarter of that win over the Pacers, but the effects of it trickled into the future. One poke changed the way a usually composed guard ran a top-notch attack.
One quarter later, a similar situation presented itself but on the other side of the court. Nembhard drove right. As soon as he neared the nail, Anunoby ransacked him, a plunge forward this time with two hands clawing for the basketball. Nembhard reacted as if he were having flashbacks, jumping backward frantically and restarting the offense.
“I’m just reading the play,” Anunoby said. “I knew which way he was gonna go. … I wanna make a play, and I wanna make him throw it to Pascal.”
The greatest defenders don’t just deflect passes or knock away dribbles. They disturb rhythm, as Anunoby did when he forced the Pacers to restart their set, which ended in a difficult shot for their center, Myles Turner, and the ball rolling into the hands of Anunoby, who helped on him down low.
This stunt required extra effort, an explosion forward with both palms scratching for the basketball. But Anunoby wasn’t the only person to go the extra mile. As Thibodeau will attest, aggression like this doesn’t work without teammates who can fill in the gaps, as Hart does here.
Once Anunoby leaves for Nembhard, his man, Siakam, cuts to the basket. Nembhard, too frazzled to make a pass immediately, needs a moment to gather himself, but Hart must act quickly. Watch Hart, who is defending Pacers wing Bennedict Mathurin in the left corner, switch onto Siakam promptly as he directs Anunoby to switch to Mathurin.
“We want him to do that,” Hart said. “In our position, whoever is the low man or whoever is on that back side, communicate and put him back to where he needs to be so he can get back into it. His ability to do that obviously clogs up passing lanes. I think it throws off the offensive players because they don’t know what the hell is gonna happen — because I don’t think anyone ever does it like that.”
Anunoby credits chemistry for the switch. “(Hart) saw me over there, and he just took him,” he said.
But Hart is correct, no one attacks these types of plays quite like Anunoby does. Few have memorized tendencies like him. So dribblers react the way Nembhard did, avoiding Anunoby altogether, just as Brunson would advise is the smartest way to handle Anunoby’s stunts.
“Go the other way,” Brunson warned. “Just go the other way.”
(Photo: Brian Sevald / NBAE via Getty Images)
