TORONTO — RJ Barrett was on the brink of a statement performance, a revenge game against the team he felt no longer wanted him around.
Barrett drove to the hoop with 29 seconds remaining, his Raptors trailing by two.
Already with a game-high in points, Barrett’s opportunity was three feet away from completion.
Instead, it was OG Anunoby, the player swapped for Barrett almost a year ago, who was the hero Monday night.
Anunoby jumped behind Barrett and rejected the attempt for a moment that was emblematic of the big trade.
“This is OG’s game, man,” Karl-Anthony Towns said of Anunoby’s first game back at Scotia Bank Arena. “It meant a lot to him. And we wanted to make sure we got that for him. … OG is one of the best two-way players in the NBA. So I don’t know why we would expect anything less from him.”
Barrett, though, led all scorers with 30.
He was efficient with a stat line to indicate he outplayed Anunoby.
But the Raptors lost.
And the Knicks won, 113-108, because Anunoby came through with the big defensive play.
“OG just has a knack for making plays defensively,” Jalen Brunson said. “When it looks like no one can make the play, he just does it. Night in, night out. That’s what he does.”
Barrett sH๏τ 13-for-24, but missed 9 of 15 attempts in the second half.
Towns was the inverse.
He struggled with his sH๏τ for much of the evening but hit two of the most important — a layup off a pretty feed from Brunson for the lead with 36 seconds remaining, then the dagger trey following Anunoby’s block.
It saved the Knicks (15-9) from an ugly defeat against the struggling Raptors (7-18).
“Just fought, man,” Towns said. “We just fought. Simple as that. Executed really well at the end.”
Barrett has been producing this season at a career-best rate, a reward, he said, of playing in a faster-paced system with more on-ball opportunities.
Barrett revealed ahead of Monday’s game that he was thrilled about the trade when it happened.
He’d been catching hints from the Knicks that he was no longer in their plans.
“Lots of stuff [gave me the sense I was going to be traded]. Lots of stuff,” Barrett said Monday after taking a deep breath. “I think I just got a vibe, kind of figured. I wasn’t really too surprised when it happened.”
Left unsaid but likely a factor was that Barrett had gone from future face of the franchise to a distant third on the totem pole under Julius Randle and, especially, Brunson.
By dealing Barrett and Immanuel Quickley for Anunoby, the Knicks created a lineup that gave Brunson the ball and further empowered his stardom.
For the Knicks, it worked as intended. Anunoby, who finished with 14 points in 41 minutes, proved his worth as a defender who can be effective offensively without the ball.
Brunson became an All-Star.
“OG was different,” Thibodeau explained Monday of the trade. “His versatility and size was something we were looking for.”
For the Raptors, the sentiment around the trade is more complicated.
On one hand, the team was entering a rebuild and had little use for Anunoby, who would have probably left in free agency, regardless.
On the other hand, the Raptors have been bad since the deal and Quickley is out indefinitely with an elbow injury.
It played out on a micro level Monday.
The Knicks were coming off their worst home performance of the season, a 120-111 loss to the Pistons that occurred without an injured Towns.
