Cade Cunningham went around Michael Bridges, crossed Mitchell Robinson and then dived all over Karl-Anthony Towns.
He agreed for a moment and shouted to the crowd at Madison Square Garden that he was dying to live.
Sharing the floor with Jalen Brunson, this time it was no secret who was the best player on the court.
He probably won’t win it this year, but Cunningham looked like the MVP.
He finished with 42 points, 13 assists and eight rebounds as the Pistons beat the Knicks 126-111 on Thursday night, moving New York to 0-3 against Detroit this year.
Most worryingly, OG Anunoby was the main defender of the Knicks in Cunningham and did not provide almost any opposition, especially during the third quarter when Cunningham took over the game.
He scored 11 of the Pistons’ points at one point in that third quarter.
Cunningham shot 57.1 percent when Anunoby was matched up against him, according to NBA Courtside tracking statistics.
Knicks coach Mike Brown tried Josh Hart and Jose Alvarado on Cunningham later in the fourth quarter, but the results weren’t much different.
Anunoby left before the press conference.
“He can do a lot for a boy his age and he puts teams in trouble with what he does because it’s your boy [6-foot-2]He’s 6-1 and for a 6-7 guy doing it,” Brown said of Cunningham. “And he puts a little bit of an edge on him. Most of the time, a small forward is not used to moving around the things he does on the floor.”
When the Knicks made a mini-run to cut the deficit to 12 points with less than five minutes left in the game, Cunningham drilled a stepback trey to remove any lingering doubt on the court.
One of the biggest defensive adjustments the Knicks made before the All-Star break was keeping the ball off the middle and forcing it to the rim.
But Cunningham forced them to return to bad habits.
“We want to try to keep the ball out of the middle,” said Brown. “And we didn’t do our job well. We let him get to the middle of the floor all the time. And when he got to the middle of the floor, he hurt us. So we’ve got to do a better job of trying to keep the ball away and not let it get to the middle of the floor.”
Anunoby missed the final four games before the All-Star break with a sprained right toenail.
He had his entire nail removed and is still in pain, he said earlier, and it’s still an open wound.
And Thursday was a nightmare to return to the court.
Despite his defensive no-show, he had a brutal shooting night.
He recorded just eight points on 3-for-13 shooting from the field and 1-of-8 shooting from 3-point range.
As a team, the Knicks went just 8-for-35 from deep.
“We did a really good job of generating open looks, especially at the three-point line,” Brown said. “They just didn’t come in tonight.”
No, they certainly didn’t.
It seems that’s all Cunningham has done, though – especially against Anunoby.
