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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – Early in the 2018-19 season, Nick Nurse – then in his first year as head coach of the Toronto Raptors – was asked what OG Anunoby is like off the court. The soft-spoken, enigmatic young forward can be a tough nut to crack, after all.

“He sends me random, out-of-the-blue texts,” Nurse revealed.

“This was the middle of the summer, [he texted] ‘Hey coach, how do I get on the floor in the fourth [quarter]?’ I said, ‘You need to defend and make open shots,’ and he’s like, ‘Well, I do that already.’”

Anunoby was coming off his rookie campaign. He started most of the games he played during his first year in the NBA, but rarely finished them. His fourth-quarter usage has been all over the map ever since.

Last season, Anunoby finished second on the team in fourth-quarter minutes, behind only Fred VanVleet, though Toronto had a negative net rating (minus-4.3) with him on the floor. This season, his late-game opportunities were more sporadic. He was seventh in fourth-quarter minutes, despite logging the third-most total minutes and appearing in the second-most games for the Raptors. But the results were much better – a plus-4.6 net rating.

Now, through two playoff games in the NBA bubble, Anunoby has established himself as an important fixture in Nurse’s crunch-time lineups.

After getting off to a quiet start in Monday’s first-round series opener against the Brooklyn Nets – a convincing 134-110 win for Toronto – the 23-year-old came alive in the final frame, scoring nine of his 12 points, highlighted by a spin move and powerful dunk on Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot.

Wednesday’s Game 2 followed a similar script – the slow start and a strong finish, only this time he literally got a jolt of energy.

Early in the fourth, Nets forward Rodions Kurucs inadvertently drilled Anunoby in the face with his shoulder on a hard screen. There was a review to see if the contact was flagrant, but the officials ruled it a common offensive foul.

Once Anunoby shook it off and play resumed, it was like he had been shot out of a cannon. On the very next possession, he caught the ball in the corner, blew by Luwawu-Cabarrot on the baseline and threw it down with his right hand. He took the ball inside again moments later, this time drawing a foul on Jarrett Allen. On the defensive end, he forced a turnover on Caris LeVert.

Was he sparked by the hard foul?

“A little bit,” Nurse said. “A little bit.”

“I guess we use it as motivation or whatever,” said Anunoby. “But we try to stay aggressive the whole game.”

“I liked his fire, I liked his spirit,” VanVleet said, following the 104-99 comeback win, which put Toronto up 2-0 in the series. “We need him to take advantage of things when they’re there and stay engaged and stay locked into the game with his great energy, and he did a great job on Caris in the second half. We know what we’re going to get from OG, and he was great for us tonight.”

So far, 13 of Anunoby’s 18 points in the series have come in the fourth quarter, where he’s logged 21 minutes – tied with VanVleet for most on the team. The Raptors have outscored Brooklyn by 24 points in those minutes.

In both games, Anunoby played a big role in shifting the momentum at critical stretches early in the fourth.

On Monday, Brooklyn made a run to cut its deficit – which was once as large as 33 points – down to nine going into the final quarter. Fuelled by Anunoby, Toronto was able to respond and put the game away.

Through the first three quarters of Game 2, the Raptors only held the lead for 33 seconds. They trailed by one point at the time of the Kurucs foul. Anunoby put them on top with his dunk, and then again at the free-throw line moments later.

Most importantly, while VanVleet started both contests guarding LeVert, Anunoby’s been the primary late-game defender on Brooklyn’s rising star, and has helped hold him to a total of two points on 1-of-6 shooting in 16 fourth-quarter minutes. Although LeVert’s recorded 26 assists in the series, only four of them have come in the fourth, where he’s also committed four turnovers.

“He’s been really good defensively,” Nurse said of Anunoby, following his team’s Thursday morning practice session from Disney. “He’s really working hard there and taking pride in it and making that part of who he is. I know that’s kind of what we needed him to be and what we wanted him to be, and what he could do because of his physical attributes and his athleticism, but he’s really making it part of what he wants to be, and that’s huge. That’s very important.”

Whether Nurse sticks with his starters down the stretch, goes with the big lineup, or even if he opts to play smaller  as he did to close Wednesday’s game, expect Anunoby to be out there in the most crucial moments of the game. He’s earned it.

“For us, we always trust in his abilities and now he’s doing it,” Kyle Lowry said. “He’s worked, he’s put the time in, the work in the post and the work on the ball handling, and now he’s putting it into play… He’s just gonna continue to get better. OG [has] a really, really high ceiling and I think these are just baby steps for him in his career.”

“He’s becoming a really good player is the real bottom line about it,” said Nurse. “He’s really becoming a really good player for our team.”​