{"id":121479,"date":"2025-02-02T11:20:48","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T16:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=121479"},"modified":"2025-02-02T15:25:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T20:25:32","slug":"knicks-rotation-while-og-anunoby-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/02\/knicks-rotation-while-og-anunoby-out\/","title":{"rendered":"What Knicks Could Do With Rotation While OG Anunoby Is Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Knicks have mostly avoided a major injury this season. Other than Mitchell Robinson<\/a> who has yet to play this season, they have stayed relatively healthy once two key reserves came back. On Saturday, Knicks fans had to hold their collective breaths. Starting forward OG Anunoby<\/a> went down with what looked like a non-contact injury. Those injuries usually portend to some type of long-term injury, but initial reports are that Anunoby has a sprained right foot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While a timetable is not yet known as of this writing, the 27-year-old will certainly miss some time. What could the Knicks rotation look like while he is out?<\/p>\n

What Knicks Could Do With Rotation While OG Anunoby Is Out<\/h2>\n

Anunoby Injured After Not Missing A Game<\/h3>\n

Injury-prone through some of his career, that had not been the case for Anunoby this season. Saturday was the Knicks 49th outing in 2024-25. Anunoby has been in New York\u2019s starting lineup for all of them.<\/p>\n

His streak of starting and appearing in every game on the year will likely come to an end Monday when the Knicks play the Houston Rockets. It was in the third quarter on Saturday when Anuboby\u2019s injury occurred.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tough break for New York, who as mentioned has not had many misfortunes when it comes to injuries. It was this past offseason that Anunoby re-signed with the Knicks on a five-year deal worth $212.5 million<\/a>. That is the richest contract in franchise history.<\/p>\n

This season, the 6-foot-7 forward has posted averages of 16.4 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.4 steals, and 0.9 blocks. An eight-year NBA veteran, Anunoby has shot 48.2% from the field, 36.5% on three-point tries, and 79.2% from the foul line. An All-Defensive member in 2022-23 while with the Toronto Raptors, Anunoby was trending towards being in consideration again for the honors.<\/p>\n

Knicks Rotation Forced To Be Changed<\/h3>\n

Obviously, as long as Anunoby is out, the Knicks will need to make a change to their starting lineup. The most likely recipient of being promoted to the starting lineup is Miles McBride<\/a>. The 24-year-old played the first 10 minutes of the fourth quarter for New York on Saturday before head coach Tom Thibodeau emptied the bench due to the game being out of reach.<\/p>\n

Thibodeau could also insert Precious Achiuwa<\/a> into the starting lineup. That would allow for more size as a Jalen Brunson<\/a>\/McBride backcourt would be rather small.<\/p>\n

After spending much of the season playing an eight-man rotation, Thibodeau has expanded it to nine<\/a> the last six games. After Precious Achiuwa<\/a> and Landry Shamet<\/a> missed much time to begin the season, they have become staples off the bench. Cameron Payne<\/a> has shot nearly 40% from three-point range as their backup point guard.<\/p>\n

Will Thibodeau go back to an eight-man rotation with McBride (or Achiuwa) entering the starting lineup? Up until Saturday, the Knicks had won five straight with nine men playing important minutes. If Thibodeau wants to stay with nine, Jericho Sims<\/a> would probably be his first choice. Sims has started five games at center this season when Karl-Anthony Towns<\/a> has been unavailable. If Mitchell Robinson were to return<\/a> before Anunoby (unclear when Robinson will finally return), he would be that ninth player. Thibodeau could also move McBride back to the bench and start Robinson if that were the case, moving Towns to power forward where he played alongside Rudy Gobert<\/a> with the Minnesota Timberwolves.<\/p>\n

The NBA trade deadline is also this Thursday. Will the Knicks front office feel more inclined to make a move with Anunoby out (especially if he\u2019s expected to miss ample time)? New York is close to exceeding the second apron, limiting their trade options, but it\u2019s certainly not impossible to make a deal.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: \u00a9 Brad Penner-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Knicks have mostly avoided a major injury this season. Other than Mitchell Robinson who has yet to play this season, they have stayed relatively healthy once two key reserves came back. On Saturday, Knicks fans had to hold their collective breaths. Starting forward OG Anunoby went down with what looked like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5060,"featured_media":121539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,12],"tags":[4386,4389,1082],"class_list":["post-121479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-knicks","tag-jericho-sims","tag-miles-mcbride","tag-og-anunoby"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121579,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121479\/revisions\/121579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}