Anunoby, Knicks dominate Barrett, Raptors

NEW YORK – RJ Barrett did not have his revenge game against the New York Knicks, which drafted him third overall in 2019, then traded him last year. 

Instead, it was OG Anunoby, the player whom the Knicks acquired for Barrett and now-injured Immanuel Quickley, who haunted his former team. 

Anunoby scored 31 points on 13-of-15 shooting night to pace the surging Knicks to their fourth straight win — a 139-125 rout of the Toronto Raptors — Monday night (Tuesday morning Manila time) at Madison Square Garden. 

Anonuby rocked the Garden with an array of dunks. He made his first 11 shots as the Raptors had no answer to their former wing.

Barrett, who scored 23 points in his second game as a Raptor in the Garden, scored the first basket after tip-off as Toronto kept in step with New York in the first quarter, trailing only by two, 30-28, after Cam Payne’s long 3-pointer to end the quarter.

Then, the Knicks took over in the second quarter.

Payne continued to inflict pain on the Raptors as he picked up the slack for Jalen Brunson, who had a rare off night. The second-string guard rattled off 11 of his season-high 19 points in the second quarter to lead the Knicks’ 40-24 pull-away for a 70-52 halftime lead.

Anunoby poured 16 points in the third quarter, with the Knicks extending their commanding lead to 31.

“OG was terrific on both ends,” Thibodeau said after the game. "When Cam (Payne) went in with Deuce (McBride), they gave us some big spark there. And so, we got good minutes from that."

Anunoby finished with a game-high plus-25 plus-minus. He added seven rebounds, four assists and a steal in 34 minutes.

All five Knicks starters scored in double figures despite Brunson going scoreless in the first quarter.

The Knicks starting point guard did not make his first field goal until the opening moments of the third quarter. He finished with 12 points on 4-of-13 shooting with seven assists.

“He does whatever the game needs to win,” Thibodeau said of Brunson. “We built the big lead. He doesn't fight the game, right? He reads the game extremely well. And he got some guys going early. I thought he got guys into a really good rhythm.”

One of them was Karl-Anthony Towns, who had his 18th straight double-double before fouling out with still 6:27 left in the game. But the Knicks were comfortably ahead 126-104 when he left. He was still able to dominate Toronto’s frontline with 31 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.

McBride and Payne combined for 31 points off the bench as the NBA’s second-best offense continued humming.

The Knicks obliterated the Raptors defense, making 59.3% of their shots on 34 assists.

“High assist game. The cutting was good. We're scoring plenty of points,” Thibodeau said.

But their defense is now coming along after a slow start to the season. Their defensive rating has jumped to 14th from 23rd last month.

That puts them in the group of championship contenders led by the Boston Celtics, Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers after one-third of the season.

According to Todd Whitehead of Sports Radar’s Synergy Basketball, 44 of the last 45 NBA champions (going back to 1980) have had a Top-7 regular season rank in either offensive rating or defensive rating and nothing worse than the 18th rank in both.

The Knicks have now won 14 of their last 18 games since November 15, the second-best record in that span behind only the Dallas Mavericks’ 14-3 record. They did it with the best offense in the league.

With so many scoring weapons now, the Knicks can still win against lousy teams despite one of their top stars having a bad game — Brunson tonight and Towns (11 points on 3-of-10 shooting) in their previous win in New Orleans over the weekend.

But they will need all hands on deck when they host Victor Wembanyama and the much-improved San Antonio Spurs on a Christmas Day matinee.

The December 25 showdown (December 26 Manila time) between the Knicks and the Spurs is the only NBA Christmas game that will have an animated broadcast dubbed “Dunk the Halls” on Disney+ with Drew Carter, Monica McNutt and Daisy the Duck calling the game.

The real-life broadcast on ABC and ESPN will have Ryan Ruocco, Corey Alexander and Filipino-American Cassidy Hubbarth.

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Alder Almo is a former senior sportswriter for Philstar.com and NBA.com Philippines. He is now based in Jersey City, New Jersey, and writes for US-based publication Heavy.com.