CLEVELAND — Mike Brown answered the final question of a Zoom conference call with reporters on Sunday after a thrilling 121-108 win in Game 3 of the 2026 Eastern Conference finals on Saturday night. And then, the New York Knicks head coach had one more thing to get off his chest.
“Hey, y’all, I got one more thing before I’m taking off,” Brown said. “You guys can all print this. Great players out there. I’m not discounting anybody. But freakin’ OG [Anunoby] got robbed. He should’ve been First Team All-Defense. First Team All-Defense.”
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When the NBA announced the league’s 2025-26 All-Defensive Teams on Friday, Anunoby was one of the 10 players selected for recognition. He was not, however, one of the top five vote-getters from the panel of 100 media members across the globe, relegating him to the Second Team for the second time. (He’d also earned a Second Team nod in 2022-23, while a member of the Toronto Raptors.)
The First Team spots went to Defensive Player of the Year Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs, runner-up Chet Holmgren of the Oklahoma City Thunder, third-place finisher Ausar Thompson of the Detroit Pistons, Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert and Boston Celtics guard Derrick White.
Anunoby is joined on the Second Team by Toronto Raptors forward Scottie Barnes, Thunder guard Cason Wallace, Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo and Atlanta Hawks guard Dyson Daniels.
Brown’s Sunday exclamation followed on the heels of Karl-Anthony Towns jovially taking reporters — and the award-voting electorate — to task at the end of his shared postgame press conference with Anunoby:
The typically subdued Anunoby, for his part, said Sunday that “it was cool to get the recognition.”
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“I feel like I’ve been a great defender for years,” Anunoby said. “So anytime you get recognition — recognized by coaches or the media, your peers, whatever — it’s really cool. Second Team is cool.”
You know what would be cooler, though?
“I was hoping I got First Team,” Anunoby said. “I thought I should have got First Team. But Second Team, it’s good. Just as good.”
Players get two award points per First Team vote, and one point per Second Team vote. Anunoby received 67 total points — 11 First Team nods, 45 Second Team — finishing ninth, with Barnes, Wallace and Adebayo all coming closer to a First Team berth than he did.
(Pamela Smith via Getty Images)
The 28-year-old forward finished the regular season tied for sixth in the NBA in steals per game and tied for 43rd in deflections per game, with 48 blocked shots in 67 games. Opponents shot 2.7 percentage points worse than their expected field-goal percentage when Anunoby was their defender — tied for the 23rd-largest differential among 102 players to defend at least 750 shots, according to NBA Advanced Stats.
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Anunoby’s impact goes beyond his individual box score statistics, though. A Knicks team that finished the regular season seventh in defensive efficiency defended at a top-three level in Anunoby’s minutes, doing a significantly better job keeping opponents off the free-throw line and off the offensive glass with the 6-foot-7, 240-pound Anunoby on the floor.
“I mean, yeah, he’s well-deserving of it,” Knicks captain Jalen Brunson said Sunday. “He’s been tremendous, obviously, defensively. Him being able to guard 1 through 5 on any given night has really been a big part of who we are and what we’re allowed to do on defense, because of him. Any publicity is good publicity, but I think he was well deserving of that First Team.”
Dating back to mid-January, New York has allowed fewer points per possession than any team in the NBA — a level of success that Brown attributes, in part, to Anunoby’s ability to put out whatever fire he has to on any given possession.
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“The versatility that he brings — and everybody always says, ‘Oh, you got [Karl-Anthony Towns], you got Jalen, blah, blah, blah.’” Brown said Sunday. “The versatility that [Anunoby] brings to this team is off the charts, and I hope the voters get it right the next time around.”
Next time around won’t come for another 11 months, though, and Anunoby’s choosing not to look that far ahead.
“There’s a lot of great defenders in the league, so to be recognized as one of the 10 premier ones is really cool in itself,” Anunoby said. “So, just happy, and now I’ll just focus on the rest of the playoffs.”
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Before joining his premier stopper in turning attention to a closeout Game 4 on Monday, though, Brown made a point of saying that, from where he stands, just “any” recognition isn’t quite good enough.
“I’m happy he’s Second Team. He deserves something,” Brown said. “But it was wrong.”
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