Precious Achiuwa overheard a stat worth returning for just as he was about to depart the locker room late Thursday night.
The New York Knicks boast the NBA’s No. 1-ranked defense since he and two other former Toronto Raptors made the move from Canada nearly a month ago. Achiuwa turned around, smirked and asked if he heard it right — as if the 122-84 evisceration of the Denver Nuggets he had just participated in wasn’t confirmation enough.
Once he certified that, yes, his Knicks were the proud owners of the league’s top defense during the 13 games since he got to New York, the smirk turned into a beaming grin, as if one bit of information had just verified his lifelong worldview. He stood up on his tippy toes and pointed across the room to the cubby of OG Anunoby as if he were sighting a celebrity.
“First-team All-Defense right there!” Achiuwa shouted.
The declaration was emphatic, but it was no exaggeration.
The Knicks have transformed since acquiring Anunoby, along with Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn, from the Raptors. They’re 11-2 with Anunoby in the starting lineup. The defense is reaching new heights. The offense is beginning to come together — and Anunoby churned out his best scoring performance as a Knicks player Thursday, going for 26 points during the Denver destruction, his highest total since joining the Knicks.
“He’s starting to figure it out for sure,” Julius Randle said. “He’s starting to pick his spots, like when he waved me off. I’m like, ‘Just f—— go.’ Just hoop. We’ll figure it out. I like him being in an aggressive mindset.”
The Knicks, as a unit, are acting a level above aggressive. What they’ve done to the rest of the league in January is darn near vicious. And all signs, including Achiuwa’s index finger, point to Anunoby as the reason why.
The Nuggets — fighting through the fifth game of a five-game, 11-day road trip — were exhausted Thursday night. But the Knicks didn’t just win. They slapped the reigning champs. And it’s not the first game that has looked like this since Anunoby’s entrance.
The Knicks have downed the best-in-the-West Minnesota Timberwolves convincingly. They have annihilated the healthy Philadelphia 76ers in Philly. The two losses with Anunoby are by a combined eight points. One of them came without New York’s surefire All-Star, Jalen Brunson.
On Thursday, they barreled through the Nuggets — and they did it without either of their top two centers to guard the world’s greatest offensive engine, imposing 7-footer Nikola Jokić.
With Mitchell Robinson and Isaiah Hartenstein out, Achiuwa and Jericho Sims manned Jokić for most of the game. The strategy was to turn off the two-time MVP’s facilitating. The Knicks didn’t send frantic double-teams Jokic’s way, instead encouraging their centers to get physical with a man who New York head coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game has “the mind of a point guard.” And to put words in Thibodeau’s mouth, Jokić doesn’t have the mind of just any floor general; it’s as if he stole Magic Johnson’s brain.
The Knicks were subtle in the way they handled Jokić. It was the job of the perimeter defenders, such as Donte DiVincenzo and Anunoby, to stick with their men but also to notice when they could disrupt the brute center, as well. If Jokić turned to the middle of the floor, a Knicks defender would “stunt” at him, stepping in from the outside to jab at the basketball.
It’s not an easy plan to execute, considering Jokić’s teammates cut with the best of them. Leave your man for a split-second too long, and the greatest passing big man of all time will find him. But thanks to their discipline on the outside along with impressive one-on-one defense from the centers (for example, Anunoby could not have ripped away the ball in the play above if Sims had not stood up to Jokić and pushed him in Anunoby’s direction), the Knicks pulled it off.
“I’m looking at…
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