We need to talk about Julius Randle/OG Anunoby as the Knicks’ 5
Sometimes doing the right thing means waiting for the right time to do it
When the 2025 season kicks off two months from today, your first hint that the New York Knicks have made “the” change fans and analysts have been clamoring for – legalizing Julius Randle/OG Anunoby minutes at center – may be that you don’t see it. And won’t, for a while, hopefully.
This isn’t the first time the people demanded small-ball Randle. A few years ago the call to was inspired by dreams of him and Obi Toppin topping shrunk-down souped-up scoring lineups. But what’s heaven to one person is hell to another, particularly when that other is Tom Thibodeau and heaven comes at the cost of defensive vulnerability to paint attacks. Thus all those Obius Trandle dreams went the way of people’s fantasies about Margot Robbie and Will Smith ending up together: cute reminders of a moment we’ll never get back.
The latest proposition posits a polemic but potentially positive positional re-purposing, a hybrid pivot featuring Randle as the offensive center and Anunoby as the defensive center. Presumably this opens up the best of both worlds for the Knicks: Randle’s ability to out-quick or out-skill most opposing 5s, plus his threat as a 4-on-3 hub off pick-and-rolls, could unlock untold riches for the offense, while even with Anunoby defending a big, the addition of Mikal Bridges means the Knicks still have a plus-defender on the perimeter, plus kindred spirits Josh Hart, Deuce McBride and Donte DiVincenzo. A seductive thought, especially when you remember the job OG did defending Joel Embiid late in Game 4 last spring, with Mitchell Robinson out after being assaulted by the Cameroonian French American star and Isaiah Hartenstein committing five fouls in 10 second-half minutes . . .
Though there are reasons for excitement, don’t hold you breath. Because there are also reasons you’re more likely to see Enes Freedom man the post for the Knickerbockers between October and April than Ranunoby.
It’s the health, stupid
First there’s the little matter of health – specifically, the health of the current holder of the largest contract in franchise history. Let’s measure OG’s availability over his six-year career, expressed as the percentage of his teams’ games he played those seasons via this snazzy lil’ graph (unless otherwise noted, all numbers in this article hail from basketball-reference).
The first thing you may notice about that graph — besides the data points being stars; you’re welcome — is that’s not a lot of points. Just six. Could Anunoby be “injury-prone”? Sure. Then again, last year was the first time he was ever traded, the first time he went through the stress of upheaving his whole world midseason and changing teams/cities/countries, coaching staff, trainers, doctors, etc. If OG plays 75 games this season, last year’s aberrant. If he plays 55, it’s prophecy. What isn’t up for debate: Anunoby is essential to any New York title hopes.
I cite OG’s health to date to highlight what’s missing from the data, namely time at center. Since turning pro in 2019, Anunoby’s played 70% or more of his team’s games as often as Kristaps Porziņģis. The most minutes he’s played at center in any season is 27. So he’s been a medical question mark even without banging with the biggest, strongest dudes on the floor. Why expose him to greater risk in games 1-82? Especially when the Knicks’ white whale swims in June’s waters?
Death lineups: apply judiciously
There’s precedent to consider. The Golden State dynasty boasted the original Death Lineup, first featuring Harrison Barnes before the acquisition of Kevin Durant upped the Warriors endgame from A-bomb to H-bomb. Both lineups had non-traditional centers, usually Draymond Green, then at times in later years KD. Interesting to note is how little the Warriors went to this look in regular seasons versus playoffs: from 2015-2019, their first championship through the end of Durant’s tenure, the Warriors played non-shooting centers nearly exclusively in the regular season, then flipped the script in the postseasons.
Every one of those five seasons, Golden State allotted between 3500 and 4000 minutes to their centers. Here’s the percentage of the team’s regular-season minutes those years with Green playing the 5: 6%, 15%, 3%, 8%, 1%. In 2017 Zaza Pachulia played more than 10 times as many minutes at center as Draymond; in 2019 Kevon Looney played more than 12 times as many. Green was never a regular-season mainstay in the middle. The playoffs? That’s another matter entirely.
Draymond ranked between fourth and seventh on those teams in regular-season minutes at center, but in four of those five postseasons he saw the second-most. Here was an undersized 5 who was defensively superior and more versatile than most, who could help run the offense and even hit a three now and again. Anunoby is defensively superior than most big men and undoubtedly more versatile. Randle can facilitate and is a far greater scorer and 3-point threat than Green’s ever been, though Draymond is an exceptional passer and perceiver of evolving angles.
Time flies, though, and by the time we get to the 2022 champs Golden State looked less like their first three titlists and more like a team of particular interest to this year’s Knicks. The biggest difference was the biggest Warriors. Those early championship teams had centers like Andrew Bogut, Festus Ezeli, Maresse Speights and Anderson Varejão, dudes who’d rather give a ref a lap dance mid-game than shoot a three. Outside of Green, the only threats they ever presented shooting from the 5 were rare KD minutes and the DeMarcus Cousins fever dream.
Fast forward to 2022, a brave new world where Green’s 3-point attempts fell to a career-low, well behind those of Nemanja Bjelica, Otto Porter Jr. and Jonathan Kuminga. In the 2010s the Warriors played 200-300 minutes a season – tops – with centers who shot from deep; in 2022 it was more than 2000. That’s how much the league’s changed even from 5-6 years ago. The last Warriors to win it all toppled the team they’d prefigure, the one the Knicks have to find a way past now.
Beat Boston
Last year’s Celtics were different from the Warriors and a completely foreign alphabet than the Knicks, playing the entire regular-season and playoffs with three centers who all shoot and space in Porziņģis, Al Horford and Luke Kornet. Boston can be tough to try and draw lessons from – 19 of their 20 most-used 5-man lineups had a positive rating (apparently the key to beating the Celtics is facing them when they’re playing Kornet, Horford, Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday and Payton Pritchard together). Plus, how often does any champion spend the first two rounds tied 1-1 after losing homecourt advantage, only to blow their opponent out the next three games, then sweep a conference finals with one overtime win and two three-point victories, before winning a gentleman’s sweep in the Finals by an average margin of victory of 12.5 points? Never, right?
Odd and oddly uninspiring as the Celtics’ title-run was, it was still dominant. In addition to 16-3 being the final score of an NFL game 22 times, going back to 1922, it’s a damn fine NBA postseason record, best since the first KD Warriors. But just because spacing centers worked for Golden State a couple years ago and Boston most recently doesn’t mean New York will copy them anytime soon. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Thibodeau arrived at MSG with a rep for being as flexible as a hamstring pull, yet year after year he disproves the slander. “How much he’s embraced analytics is pretty crazy, considering that one of the primary concerns people had about him coming in was how he could adapt to the modern NBA based on his [Minnesota] teams’ shot distribution,” The Strickland’s Shwinnypooh said of Thibs. “His first season in New York [the Knicks] weren’t a high-volume 3-point shooting team and took a lot of midrange [shots], especially Julius. That is not even remotely the case anymore, and [Thibodeau] actually encourages guys to shoot 3s . . . his biggest frustration with Quentin Grimes [was] how many shots he wouldn’t pull the trigger on.”
And yet, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is cliché for good reason. Nothing in Thibodeau’s history suggests he’ll willingly go small for any reason short of the apocalypse. Since taking over the Knicks, Thibs has never had Randle play center more than 4.5% of any season’s available minutes in the middle. The two full seasons he coached the Timberwolves, Karl-Anthony Towns played around 3000 minutes at the 5 both years, dwarfing runners-up Gorgui Dieng and Cole Aldrich. That level of workload is a thing of the past at MSG; despite haters calling Thibs a Minutes Monster, no Knick has played 3000 minutes in a season since David Lee in 2010.
You have to go back to Chicago in 2011 for the last time Thibs gave a 4 heavy minutes at the 5, and that was because Joakim Noah missed nearly half the season with thumb and ankle injuries. Despite missing 23 games that year, Carlos Boozer finished second on the team in minutes at center, averaging nearly 20 minutes a game as the Bulls’ man in the middle. Once the playoffs rolled around and Noah was healthy, Boozer played under four minutes a game at the 5.
Then again, I’m not the same person I was 13 years ago. Bet you aren’t either. Ditto Thibs. Last year’s finalists were led in playoff minutes per game at center by Horford (28 minutes per) and Dereck Lively II in Dallas (21 minutes per). Mitch has never averaged more than 27 in a season or a playoffs. Even if he has a bounceback year health-wise and gets up to 28-30, the Knicks are going to need another counter when good teams force them into uncomfortable moments. Bet the Association is aware of this tendency. Thibs certainly is.
So what to do about it?
Get comfortable being uncomfortable
The Knicks are going to have to get uncomfortable. The five-man lineup from last year with the highest rating and all five players returning includes OG, Brunson, Randle, Achiuwa and Hart. Their per-48 net rating? +80. That’s pretty sick! Their total minutes together all year? 12. That’s statistically non-existent. On the other hand, they’re trying to do something they haven’t really tried to do in 30 years in contending for a title. If you’re trying to do something different, you usually have to do something different, and going small would buck not only a Thibs’ tendency but a franchise ethos.
Last year the 6-foot-8 Achiuwa played 430 regular-season minutes at center and another 92 in the playoffs. The last Knick to reach those marks was Taj Gibson in Thibs’ first year in New York. Precious is from the Bronx while Taj hails from Brooklyn, meaning the last non-native New Yorker to reach those marks was Charles Oakley back in 1998. Taj was replacing Mitch, who was lost for the season early in the season; Oak stepped up a weight class after Patrick Ewing broke his wrist early that year. Both early, season-encompassing break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situations.
Smallball now could end up creating emergencies for the opposition. The other team wants to go small? Have fun scoring against OG, Hart, Bridges, DiVincenzo and McBride. They throw their best of the best out there? Randle, Brunson, Bridges, Anunoby are right up there as far as core fours (though Derek, Mariano, Bernie and Jorge may have an argument, as would Messier, Leetch, Richter and Graves).
I mentioned the dynastic Warriors. One reason they were able to nullify seemingly every threat when they went small was because their strengths offset the usual weaknesses. The Thibs of the world don’t wanna play small because the obvious risk is that a lack of size and paint presence invites drives and high-percentage 2s or kickouts ending in open 3s or closeouts blown by. In Draymond, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala, the Warriors had three elite defenders on the floor; the KD teams had four. It doesn’t matter who’s guarding the paint if the opponent can’t get there.
Watching the video above, you can see a template for what the spring/summer Knicks might be going for. Randle isn’t KD, but he can exploit big men off the dribble and on the perimeter. Brunson isn’t Steph, but with better spacing and shooting around him, who can say what his ceiling is? Bridges and Anunoby are a reasonable approximation of the defense and shooting Klay and Iguodala brought. These Knicks aren’t those Warriors, but if you squint there are enough similarities to get you excited.
Historically, there’s always been an exchange between size and shooting: the more you have of one, the less of the other. Randle may not be Durant, but the only returning Knicks to make more 3s per game than him last year are Brunson, DiVincenzo and Anunoby. Randle brings size, shooting, skill and strength — all of ‘em. OG, too. Maybe that’s enough.
Optionality has been the key to victory since at least Sun Tzu. The Knicks appear to have that in spades – perhaps problematically, Fred Katz noted yesterday while guestimating this year’s minutes distribution on the wing:
“[Say] Anunoby receives 34 minutes. So does Bridges, who the Knicks stagger so he can play alongside McBride during the reserve minutes, allowing [Bridges] to run the second unit . . . DiVincenzo and Hart both play 25 minutes. If DiVincenzo is on fire from 3, he can play more. If the Knicks need more rebounding or an extra defender, they could turn to Hart. So what does this exercise teach us? That it’s difficult to find minutes for DiVincenzo and Hart, arguably the NBA’s best one-two punch off the bench, without playing Randle at center for a meaningful stretch of each game. If Robinson were to go for, say, 28 minutes with Achiuwa playing 20 at center, Hart and DiVincenzo would have a mere 42 minutes to share.”
There’s little question the Knicks need to go small to win big. They don’t have the five-out firepower Boston does if Mitch or Achiuwa play heavy minutes, and it’s hard to win a title bout with jabs and body shots when the champ keeps raining haymakers. Randle as the offensive center makes for a much fairer fight, and in OG the Knicks have one of the only human beings alive capable of checking each of Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey. Come playoff time, there are certain matchups where a true 5 like Mitch is essential, e.g. Philadelphia, Cleveland, Denver. Others are better met with space, pace, passing and ball-handling, i.e. Boston, Miami, Oklahoma City.
To have that ace in the hole when they most need it means keeping it under wraps until April, when the playoffs begin. Until then, the fewer hints we get of what could be the answer to Knick fans’ 52-year question, the better.
