The New York Knicks are one win away from an NBA championship, and the image that will stick from Game 4 of the Finals was a near perfection. The ball came off the rim, OG Anunoby found the space, rose before everyone else and put it back where everyone inside Madison Square Garden wanted it to go.
That was the play that finished a 107-106 win over the San Antonio Spurs, gave the Knicks a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals and moved them closer than they have been in more than half a century to their first title since 1973. Jalen Brunson will, rightly, remain the face of this team. But this night belonged to Anunoby, a player who rarely asks for the spotlight.
The Quiet Star of Game 4
He finished with 33 points, made seven of his nine attempts from three and ended the game with the kind of possession that stays attached to a player’s name.
Anunoby has never been a player who invites too much noise around him. He guards the best perimeter scorer, switches onto bigger players, cuts from the corner, makes the open three and crashes the glass at both ends.
He did not become the hero by accident. For years, he has built his value in small, repeatable actions. Toronto drafted him in 2017 with the 23rd pick, after a knee injury at Indiana. With the Raptors, he quickly became a player coaches could trust and was part of the team that won the 2019 championship. He missed that playoff run after appendix surgery, leaving one of the stranger lines in his career story. He was a champion, but he had to watch the biggest games from the side.
A year later, he got his first major playoff moment. In the bubble series against Boston, he hit a three at the buzzer to keep Toronto from falling into a 0-3 hole. Anunoby does not always look like someone built for drama, but the ball keeps finding him when the game needs a calm decision.
Why New York Needed Exactly This Player
He arrived in New York at the end of 2023 in a trade that made the Knicks’ intentions clear. The club gave up RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley, two players with real ties to the fan base, to get a wing who could help them survive the hardest part of the season. Anunoby fit almost immediately. He brought size, strength, defensive discipline…
His value is easiest to see in crunch time moments. Anunoby is the player opponents would rather not attack. Teammates know he will be in the right place. Brunson said as much after the game, and by then it hardly needed much explaining.
The final sequence was a pretty clean summary of his career. Brunson took the shot, and Anunoby went straight to the glass. He was there to finish the possession. That is concentration, but it is also habit. It is the kind of play that comes from doing the right thing thousands of times.
Anunoby, in that setting, is a strangely perfect fit. He does the work on the floor, and that appears to be enough for him.
Even after the noise of Game 4, he did not turn the night into a speech about himself. He kept bringing it back to the team, to the franchise, to the fans and to the city. That sounded about right.
If the Knicks finish the job and lift the trophy, people will write about Brunson, about a great franchise returning to the top. But Anunoby will have to be kept close to the center of that story too. He came from the background, followed the ball, put it back through the rim and may have given the Knicks the possession they will remember for the rest of their lives.