strained his right hamstring with just minutes left in the Knicks\u2019 victory over the Sixers in Game 2<\/a>. He sat the back two legs of the Knicks\u2019 four-game sweep before returning as a full participant at Knicks practice on Friday.<\/p>\n\u201cHe\u2019s been back. He looks good to me,\u201d Mikal Bridges said on Saturday. \u201cSo, I think maybe the crowd, maybe the fans and media worried a little bit more, but I know how OG works and how his body is. I think he\u2019ll be alright.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anunoby averaged 21 points on better than 60% shooting from the field and 58% shooting from 3-point range before his injury. It appears he is on track to return to the lineup for Game 1 of the conference finals against either the Detroit Pistons or Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
If the Pistons win, the series will begin in Detroit. If the Cavaliers pull the Game 7 upset, Game 1 will play out at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone\u2019s excited for the games to start, so just letting the other series play out,\u201d Anunoby said. \u201cSo if it was tomorrow \u2014 it\u2019s going to be Tuesday now \u2014 just be ready whenever it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
ECF OPPONENT<\/p>\n
The Knicks have gone longer than a week without knowing their conference finals opponent. They were also the first Eastern Conference team to advance past the first round, defeating the Atlanta Hawks in six games while all other opening-round East series went to Game 7.<\/p>\n
The Pistons swept the regular-season series against the Knicks, 3-0, with a combined margin of victory of 93 points \u2014 including a 15-point win with both Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart serving suspensions \u2014 while the Knicks won the regular-season slate against the Cavs, 2-1. They lost to Cleveland by 15 in the only game played after the Cavaliers traded Darius Garland to the Los Angeles Clippers for James Harden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super honored to say this is my third straight consecutive conference finals but in the last two conference finals, it\u2019s been teams we\u2019ve had a lot of success against in the regular season and found ourselves losing in the conference finals,\u201d said Karl-Anthony Towns. \u201cYou cannot see anything as an opportunity \u2014 \u2018Oh, well the regular season said we had success, so it should translate in the postseason.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t work like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
BROWN GETTING FLASHBACKS<\/p>\n
Brown said watching the Cavs-Pistons series gives him flashbacks of his time coaching LeBron James to his first ever NBA Finals in 2007. Brown recalled LeBron scoring roughly 24 straight points, and when the Pistons called a timeout, one of Brown\u2019s assistants suggested the head coach take control of a huddle LeBron had in command.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018There\u2019s no way in hell I\u2019m going in that huddle to tell him anything right now the way he\u2019s cooking, I\u2019m just gonna let him cook. I\u2019m not saying anything to him,\u2019\u201d Brown recalled. \u201cAnd he went out there and he just \u2014 he was amazing. That was the best seat in the house to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OG Anunoby is back to full sprinting and getting up and down the basketball court. He said the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":801797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,36330,24115,8606,1260,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,17380,15740,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-801796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-karl-anthony-towns","11":"tag-knicks","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-og-anunoby","20":"tag-pistons","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116587278452507478","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}