When a new NBA champion is crowned in the next two weeks, it’ll be a new experience for almost every player involved. Only one player on the New York Knicks and two players on the San Antonio Spurs have ever won a title, and only the Spurs’ Harrison Barnes played a major role in that title run.
The Knicks’ lone champion is OG Anunoby, who was a reserve on the 2018-19 Toronto Raptors but underwent an emergency appendicitis before the playoffs and did not appear in a single playoff game. Now, he’ll be New York’s starting power forward and, likely, the primary defender on Victor Wembanyama.
The Knicks are 4.5-point underdogs for tonight’s clash at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the total set to 218.5. Below, I’ve detailed my favorite prop bets centered around Anunoby.
Best OG Anunoby Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
OG Anunoby 3+ Three-Pointers Made (+132)
Spacing is always key against any opponent, but that’ll especially be true for the Knicks tonight against the team with arguably the most fearsome rim protector in NBA history. New York can beat San Antonio if it’s clinical enough from beyond the arc to lure Wembanyama away from the paint, but that will require Anunoby and especially Josh Hart to hit their threes. Anunoby can be trusted; he’s connected at a 48.3% clip from beyond the arc so far these playoffs and made 38.6% of his threes during the regular season, making at least three on 27 separate occasions, including in four of his final five games of the season.
Similarly, the Spurs will want to keep Wembanyama as a paint rover, so they’ll happily give up threes. They allowed the 10th-most corner threes per game in the regular season and the most in the playoffs, as well as the fourth-most wide-open threes and the sixth-most catch-and-shoot threes per game in the playoffs. That should make them a dream matchup for Anunoby, who’s converted 46.2% of his corner triples, 60.0% of his wide-open threes, and 42.0% on his catch-and-shoot threes during the postseason, ranking fourth in three point percentage over expectation. Even if he regresses to his regular season percentages (44.4% corner, 41.9% wide-open, 41.5% catch-and-shoot), he will still be a problem for San Antonio. During the regular season, the Spurs guarded him primarily with Harrison Barnes, who’s ranked in just the third percentile in total contests per 100 possessions so far these playoffs. He made five threes in the NBA Cup final.
OG Anunoby 1+ Blocks (-130)
Anunoby won’t hit this prop if Mike Brown sticks him solely on Wembanyama all series, given that the seven-foot-four Frenchman is virtually unblockable, being blocked only 39 times combined between the regular season and the playoffs despite attempting 1,339 total field goal attempts. However, there will be times in which Anunoby ends up guarding either De’Aaron Fox or Stephon Castle, as he did for a combined 33.7 partial possessions across the teams’ two regular season matchups (for context, he guarded Wembanyama for 34.8). Fox and Castle are both far more blockable, as each has been rejected at least 0.8 times per game these playoffs. Anunoby recorded at least one block in 37 of his 67 regular season games and eight of his 12 playoff games, including all three matchups against San Antonio. Two of his blocks came against Castle and one against Devin Vassell.
