Indiana basketball player OG Anunoby will undergo surgery on his right knee next week and will miss the rest of his sophomore season. The 6-8, 236 pound forward from Jefferson City, Missouri got hurt at Penn State on January 18th, and now big basketball future contains a ton of question marks.
Is he done in Bloomington?
Will he be back and recovered in time to impress NBA scouts and combine and other pre-Draft activities?
How much does the body of work that he has already put in stand for itself?
How doubtful are teams going to be about his full fitness if does in fact not return to IU next season?
For what it’s worth, quite a few NBA mock drafts have already removed OG Anunoby from their listings, but he is still present in a few.
OG Anunoby NBA Draft Mocksourcing
Walter Football 15th Indiana Pacers
Tankathon 19th Washington Wizards
NBA Draft Room 27th Houston Rockets
Anunoby was averaging 11.1 points per game this season when he got injured to go along with 5.4 rebounds and .311 three point shooting percentage. Free throw shooting is a very big concern with this guy as he’s shooting just .522 in that area during his Indiana basketball career, but hey as Easy-E famously said in his Dr. Dre diss track:
“I never met an OG, who never did shit wrong.”
The potential for him to catch on the league, based on the strength of his defense though, is certainly strong. He is currently leading the team in steals and blocked shots.
For more on what OG Anunoby brings to a potential NBA table, we now turn to FanSided:
As the league continues its shift towards “positionless basketball,” a player like Anunoby becomes invaluable on defense. The antidote to an offense that preys on creating mismatches is a flexible defender who can capably switch onto anyone, and defensively, OG Anunoby is Gumby.
In that clip, Anunoby guards three point guards, two centers, two power forwards and a wing. On the last play alone, he digs against 6-foot-11 center Mike Thorne, recovers to stonewall 6-foot-7 forward Leron Black, then switches onto 6-foot-2 point guard Tracy Abrams and does the same to him. Anunoby has the quickness to stay with most guards, the lower-body strength to bang against bigs, and any player with the misfortune of actually being his size ends up getting smothered by his wingspan (which is reportedly 7-foot-6).
That wingspan is the great equalizer for Anunoby.
Interesting stuff there; maybe OG Anunoby will be the 2017 NBA Draft wild card.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, Bold and the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication, appears regularly as a guest on CGTN America, WGN CLTV News and KOZN 1620 The Zone.
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