Oh, gee, the banged-up Knicks are going to be without one of their most important in-season acquisitions for at least the next several weeks.
A few hours after fortifying their roster with the trade for Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks before Thursday’s deadline, the Knicks announced that late-December pickup OG Anunoby underwent surgery to remove a bone fragment in his right elbow and he will miss a minimum of three weeks.
The two-way wing will be sidelined at least through the All-Star break after the Knicks officially had switched the injury report listing for Anunoby on Wednesday to bone spur irritation.
“We tried to approach it with rest first, and then you trust the medical [staff], you trust him, and this was the best course of action,” Tom Thibodeau said before Thursday’s game against the Mavericks. “So we’re optimistic that it rolls into the All-Star break [with no games from Feb. 15-21], so it seemed to make the most sense to all of us. So that’s part of it.
“You deal with it, and next guy get in there, get the job done.”
Julius Randle (dislocated shoulder) and now-traded Quentin Grimes (knee) also have been sidelined in recent games for the Knicks, and Jalen Brunson sat out Thursday’s game with an ankle issue suffered in Tuesday’s win over the Grizzlies.
Anunoby, who was obtained from the Raptors on Dec. 30 in a deal that sent RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley to Toronto, missed his sixth straight game Thursday.
He hasn’t played since Jan. 27 against the Heat due to what the team initially listed as inflammation in his elbow.
Dr. Peter DeNoble, an orthopedic surgeon and upper extremity specialist and the CEO of Modern Orthopaedics of New Jersey, said that while he hasn’t examined Anunoby, the Knicks’ time frame “sounds about right, if that’s all it is.”
“The good news is, usually once you remove a loose body, players do very well,” DeNoble told The Post. “It stops irritating the joint and there’s no more mechanical symptoms of locking or clicking. And your motion usually will return in the order of, and everyone’s a little different, but around two to four weeks.
“And he’ll have all the bells and whistles there that will help minimize inflammation and a great training staff. So I think that sounds about right in terms of a timeline, that he’s not gone for a prolonged period of time.”
DeNoble, who also serves as an assistant professor at Hackensack-Meridian School of Medicine, added that the loose-body injury is “a difficult one to play through,” and based on the information he’s read, he believes Anunoby and the Knicks were wise to not wait until the offseason to do the surgery.
“I personally think it’s a good thing that they went and did something about it now,” DeNoble said. “Clearly, it was an issue. These guys are warriors and will try to play through a lot, but a loose body is a real issue.
“Your elbow is so important. You shoot a basketball, and it could get caught between structures as you go to straighten it out, and could have a mechanical issue and feel a click or a lock that will cause pain. So this will allow him to really get his full motion back.
“If the premium is going to be to get back before the playoffs, and maybe the last games of the season, in that respect, it seems like, if that’s all that it is, that he should be in good shape.”
One question the Knicks have not answered — and Thibodeau wouldn’t even disclose what day the surgery took place — is whether Anunoby came to the Knicks six weeks ago with this injury already bothering him to some degree.
He has averaged 15.6 points and 35.7 minutes over 14 appearances since the trade, with the Knicks winning 12 of those games.
“The question mark that I can’t answer is to what extent he’s had degenerative change in his elbow,” DeNoble said. “There’s two different levels of this issue. One is the actual symptoms, if he’s having pain and stiffness and they’re calling it inflammation, it probably was inflammation related to an underlying issue.
“When you have loose fragments in your elbow, usually it’s from sort of a chronic issue that you’ve been managing for a long time, and it flares up on you.
“A lot of times in these cases there is a long-standing underlying old injury to the cartilage that’s there, and it’s kind of been laying dormant. Obviously, this is all speculative, but whenever there is a loose body in there causing irritation and preventing him from moving it around and causing irritation, pain or mechanical symptoms or incomplete motion, that’s where there’s concern.”
