What difference a year does Knick’s og anunoby

It was difficult to sit and watch.

The last time the Knicks and Pacers met in a playoff game in Madison Square Garden, everything was at the game and OG Anunoby was on the bench for the first five minutes.

Anunoby wanted to be on the ground last year with his teammates for game 7 of the Eastern Conference semi -finals between the Knicks and the Pacers. He wanted it so much that he had missed four games in a row with a pulled armpit hem.

After Anunoby had shot the crowd by hit his first two jumpers, he clearly did not move like him and went to the bench where he spent the game, only wish that he could be healthy and out there with his teammates.

Anunoby finally got this wish on Wednesday evening when the Knicks opened their final series of Eastern Conference against the Pacers in Madison Square Garden. And this time Anunoby is pretty healthy, which could make the difference.

The Knicks suffered a variety of injuries in the playoffs of last year, but their series against Indiana changed the direction when he was injured in the third quarter of game 2. Anunoby had scored 28 points, and the Knicks led around nine when he asked for 4:02 in a quick break in the third quarter.

The Knicks won this game to take over a 2-0 lead, but then went 1: 4, although Anunoby was missing everyone except for the beginning of game 7.

“It was a hard series,” Anunoby recalled at Shootaround on Wednesday. “We lost in seven. We could have won … but you can’t really think about it. Just go forward and it is another opportunity.”

It is the kind of opportunity that has not been seen in New York for 25 years, and the entire city seems to have come on board. The Knicks are not the same team that lost against the Pacers last season when they made big trades outside of the season for the Landstarter Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges. However, it is the trade that they made for Anunoby in the middle of the last season and which may have had the greatest influence.

Since Anunoby came to the Knicks to the Knicks in December 2023, the Knicks record in the regular season has been 65-32 and 14-7 in the playoffs. Without him in the regular season and 1: 3 in the playoffs hardly .500 (36-31).

Nevertheless, some people scratched themselves in the playoffs and scratched the fact that the Knicks held the largest contract for free agent in the franchise history for $ 212 million in a man who was her third and sometimes fourth offensive option.

But then game 1 came the semi -finals of the Eastern Conference, which brought out the believers from Knicks fans and planted doubts about the heads of the Celtics.

It was Anunoby who appeared in game 1 to dig the Knicks from a 20-point hole in the third quarter. Anunoby scored 29 points and scored 6-against-11 from beyond the arch, while his defense contributed to keeping the Celtics at 15 out of 60 on three-clocks. The importance of this victory cannot be exaggerated if you consider that the kinks had gone 0: 4 against the Celtics in the regular season.

Anunoby also came up for the Knicks when they missed Jalen Brunson for a month towards the end of the regular season when he Rehate his bricked up ankle. Although Anunoby has always been known as one of the best defensive players in the league, this was both offensive and health-related his best year because he scored an average of 18 points in career opportunities and had average his career high through games of 70 games.

A large part of what OG Anunoby has to do in this series against Indiana is the help of Pascal Siakam, the leading goal scorer of the Pacers, both in the regular and in the off -season. Anunoby and Siakam were teammates in the Toronto team that won an NBA title in 2019.

“His effects on both sides of the ball are huge,” said Brunson on Wednesday. “Obviously everyone knows what they can do, but it is offensive. If they are able to have big games on both sides of the ball, we will hopefully win more often than we do. He is obviously a large part of what we do.”

Barbara Barker is a award -winning columnist and plays the author in the sports department of Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.