Who's winning the OG Anunoby trade: Toronto Raptors or New York Knicks?
A year ago yesterday, the Toronto Raptors shocked their fans with a pair of franchise-defining moments.
To start the day, they underwent a blockbuster trade when they shipped off OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa, and Malachi Flynn to the New York Knicks in exchange for RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley.
Later in the day, a shorthanded Toronto fell 129-127 to the Detroit Pistons, who headed into the contest with 28-straight losses, which remains tied for the longest losing streak in league history.
While the shocking loss made the team the brief laughingstock of the NBA, the trade offered a possibility for the franchise to continue on their road to a true rebuild.
Rumours had percolated for a while about Anunoby possibly wanting a fresh start, and bringing in a Toronto-born player like Barrett and a new point guard like Quickley seemed as good an idea as any for the Raptors to breathe some new life into a team that seemed to be past its peak date.
Who won the trade: Raptors or Knicks?
Most reaction of the deal seemed to mark it as a win for both sides.
Today, that conclusion is a little harder to evaluate.
For New York, it’s clearly worked out well in the short-term.
The Knicks sit third in the Eastern Conference with a record of 23-10, with Anunoby having one of the most consistent years of his career. A defensive stalwart throughout his career, he is playing the most minutes he ever has, averaging 36.3 per night.
His 16.3 points a night are almost exactly in line with the 16.2 he put up last year in Toronto, while his rebounds (5.0 per game) and assists (1.9) match up almost perfectly with career marks of 5.3 and 2.0. He has performed pretty much exactly as advertised, and fits in well among one of the conference’s best teams. Signing a shiny five-year, $215 million contract with New York this offseason, Anunoby seems set to spend the remainder of his prime with the Knicks.
On the flip side, the 2024-25 Raptors don’t exactly look much better than they were a year ago. They’re currently on a 10-game losing streak, with a high chance of making that 11 as they head into the New Year with a matinee matchup against the Boston Celtics. While a rebuild was projected for the team to enter the year, the reality of the Raptors season has been one of the NBA’s toughest products to watch on a nightly basis.
The move away from Anunoby was about the long-term future, but the short-term product has been a bit of a trainwreck, to say the least.
Barrett himself has found his game in Toronto, as he’s the team’s leading scorer with 23.4 points per game. With Barrett leading the way, Toronto’s offence has been about league average, with their 112.3 points per night ranking 14th in the NBA. On the flip side, they’ve been rather dreadful defensively, giving up 119.1 points per night, a mark that ranks 27th in the league.
It’s easy to wonder if that defence would’ve been improved had Anunoby been convinced to stick around long-term in Toronto, with no trade taking place and his long-term deal instead signed with the Raptors over New York.
But the biggest question mark for a final evaluation of the trade might be Quickley, who’s played just three games this season before suffering an elbow injury.
Part of Toronto’s disconnection appears to be due to the lack of a true lead point guard, with Scottie Barnes often taking on the duties this year despite traditionally playing more of a forward role in his time in the NBA. A year on from the deal, Barnes and Quickley have only played 26 games together, due to various injuries and absences.
Toronto probably doesn’t regret the trade by any means, but despite some individual success, the team is still a ways away from what they likely want their finished product to look like.
The other guys in the deal
Like Quickley, Achiuwa has been limited by injury this season, making his season debut on December 5 after a hamstring issue suffered in the preseason.
He’s played just 233 minutes across only 12 games so far this campaign, putting up 5.0 points and 6.8 rebounds per night, being played the seventh-most minutes in the Knicks rotation when healthy. In short, he seems to be a capable backup big, or about the path he was on in Toronto.
With all due respect, the inclusion of Flynn in the trade doesn’t really move the needle much either way in this conversation. Given the fact that he was a free agent this summer and was unable to stick with an NBA team (he’s currently in the G League with the Austin Spurs), we can pretty much pencil him in as a non-factor for this hypothetical discussion.
With so many factors to consider and so many variables still up in the air, it’s hard to really have any definitive declaration on a final grade for the trade, though it’s easy to think the Knicks are sitting prettier right now. Perhaps 2025 (and a healthy Quickley) will give us a more concrete evaluation of the full-strength Raptors, who need just about all the good vibes they can get right now.
- You might also like:
- Scottie Barnes drops some brutal honesty about lifeless Toronto Raptors