OG Anunoby’s heroics sent the Knicks on their way to the NBA title. He’s ready to move on

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

(CNN) — A black hoodie pulled over his head and his glasses framing his face, OG Anunoby is relaxing on a brown leather sofa on an August afternoon. It is the end of a marathon day of interviews, part of a pre-launch circuit for his collaboration with Essentia Water that will debut at Times Square on Tuesday.

It has been a long day and a long summer for Anunoby. His NBA Finals hero shot, coupled with the Knicks championship, has made this both the shortest and busiest offseason of his 10-year career. The Knicks didn’t stop playing until June 13, and he has not stopped since – from requisite morning show and late night TV appearances, to a parade, to the ESPYs, a new Skechers shoe drop, and now, today, a pop-up takeover in New York’s most famous intersection.

“I’ve been pretty busy,” Anunoby says during his Zoom interview with CNN Sports.

He says this with all of the inflection of a monk mid incantation, if not bored with his sudden burst of worldwide fame then certainly wildly unimpressed with himself – which is, of course, vintage Anunoby. He is a raging stoic who plays like a whirling dervish, an athlete coiled to explode yet a human hard-wired to chill.

That Anunoby’s shot has now been dubbed the “Hand of God” indicates that God truly must have a sense of humor. How else to explain someone so intentionally devoid of emotion bringing hard-to-impress New Yorkers to their knees and crafting an unforgettable moment inside Madison Square Garden, a building that has seen a thing or two?

Yet as Anunoby politely answers questions during the course of a 10-minute interview, in which his emotional range stretches from slightly raised eyebrow to glimmer of a smirk, it becomes clear that his meme-inducing trait is, in fact, emblematic of his team’s greatest gift.

In a little more than a month, training camp will open, wherein the Knicks will be asked to do something even more difficult than breaking a 53-year championship hex; they will have to defend their title. It is an impossibly heavy burden for any team in any sport. Only 34 franchises across the NBA, NHL, MLB and NFL have won back-to-back championships and none in the NBA since Golden State in 2018.

It is an albatross with a weight problem in New York, where success is considered a birthright and excellence is the only acceptable level of standard. In the past 28 years under Brian Cashman’s direction, the Yankees have won four World Series and never had a losing record. Plenty of people would like to see the general manager canned.

Anunoby already owned an NBA crown before this one, winning with Toronto back in 2019. But he was just two years into the league, and an appendectomy removed him from the playoff mix. And, at the risk of throwing shade on what that championship meant to Toronto and Canada, nothing can quite match the hysteria of a deprived New York fanbase.

“No, I don’t think anything could prepare you for this until you went through it,” Anunoby said.

To navigate such absurdity, it helps to have a handle on the ridiculousness.

The Knicks are better prepared than most. After opening the Finals with back-to-back wins on the road, they stared at the ruinous possibility of squandering the advantage. The San Antonio Spurs, who won Game 3 at the Garden, built a 29-point lead in Game 4 and appeared on the verge of knotting up the series. Instead, New York mounted an improbable if not impossible resurrection, Anunoby’s tip-in providing the exclamation point to the delirious comeback.

Earlier this month, Anunoby created something of a stir when he said he was “over” his big moment. Instant fame and all its trappings are something most people would love to marinate in, to soak up what almost always is fleeting adoration. He is quick to clarify his meaning, explaining that it’s not that he doesn’t care about it and doesn’t enjoy watching the replays.

“I just mean I’m ready for next season,” he said. “You know, get ready to hopefully win another championship. So just embracing it and loving it, but also you have to move forward.”

Such is the push/pull for any champion. Success can feel like a cruel tease, fleetingly unattainable and yet when finally achieved, too dangerous to enjoy too long. But it is the only place to land in a sports world where yesterday’s champion quickly can become yesterday’s news.

Unlike the 2025 champion Oklahoma City Thunder and the Spurs – their Finals opponent – the Knicks do have a few things going for them. They are considerably older (28.8 average age compared to 25.6 for OKC) and have been through a thing or two. Fame did not find them overnight; they grinded their way to it. With the exception of Karl-Anthony Towns, none were drafted as the centerpiece of any franchise.

They also were reared in the disparate and yet beneficial worlds of humility and attention. Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges won two titles at Villanova and Josh Hart one. In their first national title game, the Wildcats humiliated Oklahoma in the national semifinal by 44, and in their second, demoralized Michigan in the title game by 17. Each time they discounted it as nothing more – or less – than playing Villanova basketball. So systematic was Villanova in its eviscerations, South Florida head coach Chris Mack, who coached against the Cats when he was at Xavier, once referred to Brunson as a cyborg.

Towns, meanwhile, played at Kentucky, maybe one of the few collegiate fishbowls that can compare to the attention in New York. Then there is Anunoby, who played at Indiana where basketball nets hang on barns and until Curt Cignetti arrived in Bloomington, football season mostly meant preseason hoops season. In his freshman year, the Hoosiers went to the Sweet 16; at the end of his sophomore season his coach, Tom Crean, was fired.

It feeds into a team that has, like Anunoby, enjoyed the fruits of its championship labor without getting lost in them.

“We’re all levelheaded, and we’re all pretty similar,” Anunoby says. “Personality-wise, we’re all just levelheaded and chill, and you know, take everything day by day. I think that’s what we’re all doing after the win, just taking stuff day by day.”

So levelheaded, in fact, that the team group text isn’t about reliving their glory or hard charging to the future. “It’s mostly memes and stuff,” Anunoby says, crediting Landry Shamet and Tyler Kolek as the best of the bunch.

Their serenity will be challenged immediately. The NBA scheduling gurus penned the ideal marketing script, partnering the Knicks opener with the Philadelphia 76ers and their new roster addition. On a quest to grab one more ring, LeBron James will make his Philly debut on the same night the Knicks, the team that summarily swept the Sixers in the Eastern Conference semifinals, get their rings.

It is a chef’s kiss of master planning, sure to set the NBA and New York on fire on the first night of the season.

“He’s one of the all-time best, and as he gets older, you never know how many more opportunities or seasons he’s going to play,” Anunoby said of James. “Anytime you get to play against him is an honor.”

But knowing all too well that the NBA season is an 82-game slog, and being, well, being him, Anunoby refuses to hop aboard the hype train as it pulls back into Penn Station.

Asked what he thinks it will be like, he half-smiles.

“They’re a great team, a lot of great players and a great coach,” he said. “So, it’ll be fun.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.