Ode G

An old friend makes his return with a tribute to the man who helped define New York’s championship run.

Good morning! Slow news day yesterday. The most significant Knicks-related item was a picture of Tom Thibodeau wearing skinny jeans. Fun.

Anyway, I’m excited to reveal some new bells and whistles pertaining to Knicks Film School over the coming weeks, starting today: Tom Piccolo is back! For newer subscribers who may not be familiar with Tom, he was a long-time prominent voice in these Knicks streets, both at the keyboard and behind the mic. Lucky for us, after taking a few years off, he reached out to me this summer with a desire to get back in the game, and I’m happy to say he’ll be contributing some writing for us this season. He makes his debut today (don’t call it a comeback) with an ode to a player who was instrumental to New York’s magical run.

To celebrate Tom’s return, this edition is unlocked for all KFS subscribers!

Ode G

by Tom Piccolo

I remember when it happened.

I remember the moment I realized that I had a new favorite Knick. It was the playoffs, of course, when our psyches, as fans, are at their most malleable. He was in the low post, tasked with defending a giant. There are not many players who make OG Anunoby look small, but he’d found one. The opponent stood over seven feet tall, one of the most skilled bigs in the league. No, not that one.

It was April 28, 2024. Let me refresh your memory. The Knicks were up 2-1 on the 76ers in the first round of the playoffs. It was crunch time of Game 4 in Philadelphia. In a one-possession game with under four minutes remaining, Philadelphia initiated their half court offense with one goal: get the ball to the previous season’s MVP, Joel Embiid. OG had other plans.

Indulge me with a closer look. The play starts with screening action between Embiid and Kyle Lowry. Jalen Brunson does a great job of getting physical and mucking up the play. From there it’s the OG show.

First, look at the angle he takes fighting over Lowry, preventing the quick post entry. That’s followed by what I can only describe as a game-changing ball denial (how many players in the league are even capable of such a thing?). Watch OG jostle to get around Embiid, wrangling him with one arm like he’s a bull rider. After OG has position, it’s just a battle of strength and determination to keep it. Anunoby grapples with The Process, using his comparatively low center of gravity to deter Embiid’s increasingly urgent attempts to get free. As the shot clock winds down, Tyrese Maxey forces a pass to Embiid, but with OG draped all over him, there’s simply no daylight.

The pass caroms to the baseline and that’s when Embiid, his options quickly dwindling, tries to do what he does best: draw a foul. He jump-stops to split a double team from Deuce McBride and throws a shot fake with 2.8 seconds left on the clock. How many other, lesser defenders would jump in that situation? Instead, OG stays on his feet, keeps his hands high and contests the release using his 7’2+ wingspan, forcing a shot that hits nothing but air.

I vividly recall getting emotional as I watched OG scrap and claw for every inch, any advantage. For whatever reason, in the moment, it called to my mind The Old Man and the Sea: a story of a solitary man out on the ocean, wrestling with a leviathan using little more than his will. It’s rare that I think about Ernest Hemingway while watching Knicks playoff basketball, so this stuck with me.

Now, I didn’t cry watching a grown man play defense during a basketball game. Let me state that for the record. Do not put in the newspaper that I cried. But I did feel myself getting choked up a bit. Watching that play did something to me that Embiid was unable to do to OG. It moved me.

Why? I knew what I was watching.

This was a player giving everything he had, every ounce of effort to make a winning play. This was someone who wanted to win just as desperately as his team’s fanbase. There were no box score stats to be had here. No individual glory at stake. This sequence made it onto exactly zero postgame highlight reels. And it’s exactly for those reasons that I’m still thinking about it more than two years later. It was the kind of defensive sequence we remember from our nostalgia-drenched childhood memories of those impossibly, mythically physical 90s Knicks. It was the kind of effort we always pined for, lamenting its absence during the franchise’s darker days.

Bear in mind, this wasn’t a case of New York conceding an unfavorable matchup. OG didn’t “wind up” on Embiid after a switch. The Knicks, on the contrary, didn’t see this as a mismatch at all. This was their ace in the hole.

New York’s starting option on Embiid, Isaiah Hartenstein, was on the bench after having allowed Embiid to score 20 points on 7-of-12 shooting while matched up on him. Anunoby, on the other hand, allowed Embiid to score just five points on 1-of-6 from the field during his time as the primary matchup. Putting a wing on Embiid was actually New York’s best option. Scratch that, putting this wing on Embiid was New York’s best option.

That night, OG proved to me that you cannot find a player too big for him to defend. Eventually, he would prove that you cannot find a moment too big for him to deliver. April 28, 2024 was when OG Anunoby became my favorite Knick and the reasons have only piled up since.

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Speaking of favorites, I keep a list in my Notes app of my favorite words. Lacuna, quixotic, dirigible, insouciance, sluice to name a few. I actually snuck one of them into the above section (leviathan). I like the way these words sound to the ear or the way they look on the page.

“Nonplussed” is one of my favorite words for a different reason. Its traditional definition is “completely surprised or perplexed.” However, over time, people repeatedly used it in a different, almost opposite way to mean “unbothered or indifferent.” That means this word originally meant one thing, then it was so frequently used in a different manner that we had to concede that the word actually required an entirely new meaning.

When OG Anunoby was acquired by New York via trade during the last days of 2023, many Knicks fans believed he was the definition of a 3-and-D wing. Now, as we reflect on what we’ve witnessed during his Knicks tenure and more pointedly during this recent championship run, it’s clear we need to start thinking of new definitions for this player. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of threes and there was plenty of defense. Sometimes within mere seconds of each other:

But, what stood out throughout the playoffs was OG’s fearlessness attacking the rim. Per Cleaning The Glass, Anunoby took 44% of his shot attempts at the rim this postseason, good for the 100th percentile among players classified as “forwards.”

It was that fearlessness that defined OG’s NBA Finals performance, and it was never more evident than when he was matched up against the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year in league history.

However, OG’s path to the paint versus Victor Wembanyama did start with the three point shot. I thought this three during a key moment down the stretch of Game 1 really set the tone for OG’s mindset throughout the series:

Don’t let the Carmelo-esque four (four!) jab steps fool you. OG, like Bernie Mac at Def Comedy Jam, was not scared of these…folks. His uncommonly high, quick release rendered Wemby unable to affect his deep ball. That’s what opened up the driving lanes.

Let’s not downplay how impactful Wemby was on defense, either. There were long stretches when it felt like he’d solved the Knicks’ offense. There were times when it felt like no one in a Knicks jersey was up to the task of challenging Wemby. That’s why plays like this were so huge:

They brought the Alien back down to Earth and reminded us that he has defensive weaknesses to exploit. Namely his footspeed, strength and stamina. Perhaps my favorite OG drive of the series came in the fourth quarter of Game 2:

I love everything about this. The fact that the Knicks are in a five-out lineup. The cross court water polo pass from KAT. The way Wemby closes out so hard to OG’s shooting hand. The blow by, of course, but OG doesn’t simply go up with it. He seeks the contact, gets into Wemby’s body and goes up for the dunk. That extra physicality makes the play so much more satisfying to watch, like OG was really trying to send a message.

After the play, you could tell both OG and Wemby were nonplussed…in different ways.

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Now, let’s momentarily go back to a less pleasant moment in NBA history for Knicks fans. Immediately following the Boston Celtics’ 2008 championship, Kevin Garnett was interviewed by Michele Tafoya who asked KG how “NBA champion” sounded as a new addition to his resume. Garnett’s oft-parodied response – most famously by the Lonely Island classic, “I’m On a Boat” – (Quaid Army IYKYK), served as a vigorous, high-volume reminder that “anything is possible.” It was the most Kevin Garnett thing ever: emotional, intense, unrestrained.

Despite their similarities as versatile, one-man defensive wrecking crews, KG and OG couldn’t be more different personality-wise. OG is a man of few words, preferring to let his on-court performance speak for him. He’s a “show-don’t-tell” type.

But, it’s even more than that. His affectless manner and unassuming persona almost feel like a schtick at this point. His interviews are so bland and laconic that they resemble performance art. His apparent lack of charisma has circled back around and actually made him highly charming and endearing. Every microphone-grab, every lackadaisical rim swing, every “Congrats Jalen,” every quirk of his feels amplified, like a window into his real self.

So, OG’s tepid response after his instantly iconic, Game 4-winning tip-in to cap the greatest comeback in NBA history…it was the most OG thing ever. He sounded like a kid who didn’t quite get everything he wanted for Christmas. Now, more than three months later, everyone is still “pretty excited.”

In fact, I urge you to watch the play again. Oh, you’ve already seen it hundreds of times? You just watched it earlier today? You’ve studied the Zapruder-esque frame-by-frame breakdowns of the Spurs’ defensive confusion coming out of the timeout? Who cares. Watch it again:

Now, do the thing where you pause the video the moment the ball leaves Brunson’s fingertips. Look where OG is. Really consider the unlikelihood of it all. Zoom out on the methodical drip-drip-drip of the 29-point comeback. Zoom out further on all of the roster building skill and luck that brought this group together from the coach to the captain to the perfect supporting cast. Zoom in on OG slicing through the lane and meeting the ball before anyone else can lay a finger on it to redirect its path. Somehow maintaining his touch and body control despite hurtling into the lane at full speed.

Watch the Garden. Close your eyes and listen to the Garden.

In that moment, OG also reminded us that anything is possible. And, true to himself, he didn’t tell us. He showed us.

Tom Piccolo is a Knicks fan and recovering blogger. His past coverage focused on topics such as the mechanics of Frank Ntilikina’s jump shot, Kyle O’Quinn’s chemistry with Doug McDermott and the value of Noah Vonleh’s grab-and-go ability. So, he remains awestruck that he now gets to write about the world champions.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”