Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
OG Anunoby's Defensive Awards Candidacy Marred by Obscure Raptors' Season
As the NBA season heads into its final week we've entered awards chatter season. It's that lovely time of year when awards arguments begin heading up. Is Nikola Jokic really the MVP of the league? Should James Harden be punished for the Houston Rockets fiasco to start the season? Did LeBron James play enough games this year to qualify for awards? And on and on and on.
On the defensive side of the ball, there seems to be a name missing from the NBA's All-Defensive team conversation and, frankly, he might the best defender in the entire league. That name is OG Anunoby.
When it comes to stopping a specific player like Anthony Davis or Stephen Curry, it's fair to say the Toronto Raptors' wing probably isn't the best choice in a one-on-one showdown. But if humanity was on the line — if you will — and the NBA needed one player to stop the aliens in a one-on-one showdown, the league's choice to save the species may very well be the 23-year-old Anunoby.
What makes Anunoby so special is his high-level versatility. He can defend one through five as well as anyone in the entire NBA. He's defended bigs as talented as Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Zion Williamson and held his own against guards like Kyrie Irving and CJ McCollum. In today's pick-and-roll, switch-everything NBA, that kind of flexibility has become invaluable.
"He can pretty much hold his own all over the court," Raptors coach Nick Nurse said. "He wants the challenges. He wants the best players. He wants the hot player and that, to me, is where it all starts."
The problem for Anunoby this season has been twofold. He's lacked the health to really be in the conversation for the league's top defensive honours and the Raptors haven't caught anyone's attention this season. He'll finish the year having played fewer than two-thirds of Toronto's games this year because of COVID-19 issues and a nagging calf injury he has yet to fully recover from.
"I mean the reality of it is we're not really on the radar much," Nurse said of Anunoby's awards candidacy. "Nobody's talking about any of our guys in any facet whatsoever. So I think if we can get the team back into contention and relevancy and things like that, then I think he’ll move to the forefront."
To their credit, Zach Lowe and Tim Bontemps both mentioned Anunoby as one of the league's top defenders on The Lowe Post. Bontemps went as far as to say Anunoby might be "the best one-on-one defender in the league." The problem, as Lowe eluded to, has just been the irrelevancy and the obscurity of the Raptors' season.
"With the Raptors you're like who's playing, who's not playing?" Lowe joked.
Next year things should be a little different for the Raptors. They'll hopefully be back home in Toronto and with a little positive regression, they should be right back in the thick of things in the Eastern Conference. If Anunoby can stay healthy — which has been an issue for him throughout his career — the Raptors' top defender will certainly hear his name popping up in these same conversations next year.
Further Reading
Kyle Lowry earns an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Acadia University
Report: Raptors scouting Australian lottery pick Josh Giddey
It's a shame Kyle Lowry isn't making a difference on a playoff team
