Insider: Knicks Could Lose OG Anunoby
OG Anunoby certainly made a strong first impression on the Manhattan basketball: the New York Knicks posted a 26-6 record when he donned his blue-and-orange No. 8 jersey after coming over in a December deal with Toronto and helped the team win 50 games and the second seed on the Eastern Conference playoff bracket.
Anunoby's future will be one of the major talking points of this Knicks offseason, one where he is widely expected to decline a $19.9 million player option that came over from Ontario. Reporting from the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago, insider Jake Fischer of Yahoo! Sports offered one of the first updates on Anunoby's potential status, one that paints a slightly dire picture for those who want Anunoby to stay put.
"There was word circling among team officials at last week’s NBA Draft Combine that Anunoby’s situation with the Knicks is not as cut and dried," Fischer reported. "Perhaps those signals to rival teams will only help Anunoby elicit a larger dollar figure from the Knicks. But various teams left Chicago with the belief that Anunoby could reach unrestricted free agency and consider deals from other franchises in addition to New York, sources said."
Fischer suggests that, if Anunoby were to walk, rival Philadelphia could prove to be a major suitor considering it may be ready to walk away from Tobias Harris.
Anunoby himself was understandably mum about his future in his final public comments of the season, reeling from an early exit out of the Knicks' Game 7 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Sunday. The only thing stopping the Anunoby prosperity was medical interruptions, as Anunoby missed at least four straight games on three different occasions, including the third through sixth games of the conference semifinals against the Pacers.
Funnily enough, family ties could wind up deciding Anunoby's metropolitan fate more than anything else: Anunoby's agent, Sam Rose, is the son of Knicks president Leon, the former head of Creative Artists Agency.
GEOFF MAGLIOCCHETTI
Editor-In-Chief at All Knicks