The New York Knicks are entering the 2025 NBA All-Star Break on a major high, collecting back-to-back wins against the Indiana Pacers and Atlanta Hawks on the shoulders of Karl-Anthony Towns’s consecutive 40+ point games and Jalen Brunson’s dominant clutch gene.
However, there’s one thing preventing the Knicks’ All-Star party from reaching epic proportions: the status of one of their key swingmen.
OG Anunoby is entering this week’s break on a five-game DNP streak after suffering a noncontact injury early in the third quarter against the Lakers on Feb. 1. The Knicks officially labeled the injury as a “mild foot sprain.”
In a vacuum, this noncontact injury is a nonissue. Both the X-rays and MRI came back negative, so the Knicks are simply playing it safe, and Anunoby should be back in action by the time the NBA resumes regular play.
Should be (is the key phrasing here).
The problem is that this is not an isolated incident, and to some, it’s starting to feel all too familiar to OG’s injury saga of last season, which saw him miss 27 games in a 30-game span.
It started the same way, too—with “questionable” game statuses and an injury initially disclosed to the public to seem better than it truly was. Anunoby was listed as a late scratch with “right elbow inflammation” in the first of his 18-game absence.
It was just over a week and four games later when the Knicks then changed the initial diagnosis of “right elbow inflammation” to “bone spur irritation,” thus spurring Knicks fans into a “flurry of worry” (in the great Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s voice).
The very next day, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news that Anunoby had completed surgery to correct his bone spur issues but would be sidelined for at least three weeks.
Anunoby would come back just over a month later in a game against the Philadelphia 76ers on Mar. 12. He was a deciding factor in a crushing win over an opponent that New York would later see in the playoffs, putting up only 14 points but having the second highest plus/minus of the game with a +28.
He played just two more games (both wins) before being taken out of the rotation once again with “right elbow injury management,” which, similar to the initial diagnosis, was retroactively changed to “right elbow tendinopathy.” He was sidelined for another nine games straight.
The question of Anunoby’s injury status became so uncertain that when asked about it, teammate Josh Hart said that the Knicks need to operate as if they wouldn’t have him for the remainder of the season.
Of course, we know now that Anunoby would make it back for the end of the regular season and playoffs before eventually suffering another (unrelated) injury in Round 2 against Indiana.
New York’s record was 13-14 in those 27 regular season games without Anunoby, cementing his importance to the team’s success even further than the win streak they went on in January, almost immediately after trading for him.
A year later, Anunoby is injured for the second straight NBA All-Star Break. This time, though, now with a bit more of a positive aura surrounding the situation. Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau referred to Anunoby’s lack of participation in games and practices as more “precautionary” than anything else.
Regardless of whether or not Anunoby’s injury has been properly diagnosed this time around, it’s tough to blame anybody’s skepticism after last season’s fiasco. This is especially true considering his impact on determining the success of this Knicks team for the remainder of this season is equally as inarguable.
Since acquiring him from the Raptors, the Knicks have a record of 52-20 in games that Anunoby plays in, a winning percentage of nearly 75%.
While the Knicks have caught some flack for their inability to show that they can compete with the league’s top teams thus far, they still have the opportunity to grab true contender status before it’s too late. At least in the eyes of legendary head coach and disgraced ex-Knicks team president Phil Jackson, that is.
“You must win 40 games before you lose 20 to be seen as an elite team,” Jackson said halfway through the 2008 season, per ESPN’s Marc Stein, as his Los Angeles Lakers boasted a record of 42-18 up to that point.
This quote has now become a type of standard that teams follow to gauge who the true competition is when it comes down to crunch time.
The Knicks, who have the ninth-hardest remaining strength of schedule in the NBA (via Tankathon), will need all hands on deck straight out of the break if they want to achieve this goal.
This, of course, includes OG Anunoby.
