PORTLAND, Ore. — An easy Knicks victory and a Jalen Brunson masterpiece were clouded by the sight of OG Anunoby feeling clear discomfort in his surgically repaired elbow.
The team’s defensive stalwart appeared to aggravate his right elbow in the second quarter of Thursday’s 105-93 victory over the shorthanded Trail Blazers, unable to hide his irritation while logging 36 minutes.
Still, the 27-year-old downplayed any concerns in the postgame locker room, saying the soreness was anticipated, and he wasn’t going to miss the next game.
“It’s just sore. Nothing really happened,” Anunoby said. “Just went for a ball. And it hurt randomly, but it’s fine.”
Asked about his availability for Saturday in Sacramento, Anunoby affirmed, “I wasn’t thinking about not playing.”
In many ways, the night was a microcosm of the season.
Brunson was spectacular while scoring 45 points, hitting 14 of his 30 field goals.
The Knicks beat up on a bad team, improving to 24-3 against opponents under .500.
They won their second straight and remained in fourth in the East, a full game ahead of the No. 5 Magic.
But once again there’s concern about the health of one of their most important players. At least in this case, the Knicks — both Anunoby and coach Tom Thibodeau — are on the record saying the pain wasn’t a big issue.
“There’s gonna be some times where there’s gonna be soreness. He played through it,” Thibodeau said. “He was fine. [The doctor] looked at him. There’s gonna be times where he gets hit and you just try to keep going. So we’ll see where he is.”
Anunoby finished with 12 points and downplayed his discomfort, even with his surgery less than two months in the rearview.
“It’s not even pain tolerance,” Anunoby said. “This is just a random thing.”
With 3:35 left in the second quarter, Anunoby reached to strip Portland’s Deandre Ayton.
The steal was successful but Anunoby quickly grabbed his elbow and audibly expressed pain.
He pivoted to the sideline holding his elbow and was subbed out eight seconds later after a foul. Anunoby was attended by a trainer on the bench and had his elbow wrapped with a heating pad.
Anunoby, a free agent this summer, sat the remainder of the first half and returned to play after the break.
He clearly felt discomfort, however, while fidgeting and bending his elbow intermittently on the court.
The fact that he kept playing — logging 9 ½ consecutive minutes to start the second half — was probably a good sign, especially that it included two of his dunks.
But he then returned to the bench for more treatment, a discussion with a training staffer, and more heating-pad action.
He played 10 ¹/₂ minutes in the fourth quarter, watching Brunson punish Portland with 24 points in the second half.
Anunoby, the common thread to the Knicks’ best stretches of the season, underwent arthroscopic surgery in early February to remove loose bone fragment from his elbow.
He missed 18 straight games — with the Knicks going 8-10 during that stretch.
Anunoby returned for Tuesday’s blowout over the Sixers, a defensive domination that underscored Anunoby’s impact on winning.
But Anunoby also has a long history of injuries and illness, which limited him to fewer than 70 games in his last five seasons with the Raptors.
He missed Toronto’s entire 2019 playoff run to the championship with a ruptured appendix.
“There’s gonna be bumps and bruises in every game,” Thiobodeau said. “And then you check after the game, you check in the morning. But we were expecting there to be some bumps and bruises like that [with Anunoby’s elbow].”
Thursday was the first game of a longest road trip remaining on the schedule for the Knicks, with dates upcoming in Sacramento, Golden State and Denver.
On paper, the Blazers (19-47) are by far the easiest.
Not only are they a bad team at full strength, they were severely understaffed Thursday.
Four of their best players — Jerami Grant (hamstring strain), Malcolm Brogdon (elbow tendonitis), Shaedon Sharpe (abdominal surgery) and Anfernee Simons (knee tendonitis) — were all out.
So the Knicks (39-27) took care of business.
It just took them a little while to warm up.
They trailed by seven within five minutes of tipoff, then by four early in the second.
The Knicks followed with a 15-4 run, keyed by Brunson, that put them up for good.
“What can you say? It’s unbelievable just to watch it,” Thibodeau said of Brunson’s performance. “He ended up with 17 free throws, and I thought that there could have been a lot more, but he’s just clever. He’s shifty. And he does everything. He doesn’t stop moving. He creates a lot of good offense for us.”
