Knicks finally beat Magic after OG Anunoby-Desmond Bane incident

A sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden has its eyes on one player: Desmond Bane, the Orlando Magic star who drew the ire of an entire building in the span of two seconds.

There’s just over six minutes left in the fourth quarter of a possible Knicks 106-100 victory over the Magic, and Jalen Suggs chased down OG Anunoby to block his quick layup at the backboard.

Suggs is not whistled for a foul, but Anunoby tumbles out of bounds. The ball does not follow him. Instead, it bounces in a straight line towards the bottom of the net.

And then, the most unnecessary moment in all hell breaks loose: Bane, in complete control of his momentum, catches the ball and sends it behind Anunoby’s back. Anunoby is out of bounds, so now the ball is out of bounds too.

But Bane’s spike isn’t your average throw to knock the ball off someone. This is a full-throttle volleyball tip from the closest thing to an NBA bodybuilder.

“That’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen on the basketball court, dog,” Josh Hart said after the game. “I was laughing all the time. I couldn’t help it.”

Anunoby immediately stands up and meets Bane face to face. He shoves the Magic guard as players and officials separate the two from each other.

“When I saw him, he looked frustrated,” Mikal Bridges recalled from his locker. “But after a second he asked me, ‘Why did you do that?’ He was just trying to understand why.

But Anunoby’s impassive face lasts only a moment. Just seconds after the players separated him from Bane, the Knicks star smiled in Bane’s direction.

“I was confused. I was confused at first, then it was funny,” he explains later in his locker. “I like Desmond, so I’m not mad at him.”

“He’s a good guy. It was funny.”

However, a throw like that, from a player built like he ate Mack trucks for breakfast, would certainly leave a mark.

“He had the ball, and then he threw it to me. It was funny,” Anunoby said. “He threw it pretty hard, but it’s all good.”

Not everything is good. Not for the fans who made Bane the new public enemy No. 1 at the Garden this season. Forget the fact that the Magic have already embarrassed the Knicks twice this year. One of their star players just tried to punch a Knick’s back.

“Yeah, after seeing it on replays a few times, I knew [the fans] we were going to get angry about it,” Bridges says.

The replay shows center field Jumbotron idling at least five times before officials assess Bane a technical foul for the play. The fans, however, want their pound of flesh. They want to get it back in blood.

So they boo him mercilessly every time he touches the ball until the end.

“I don’t think it was going to escalate, but it was hilarious,” Hart says. “I don’t even think OG was really mad. He was just like, ‘Yo, are you okay?'”

Anunoby finished his second game back from a hamstring injury with 21 points and seven rebounds on 8-of-14 shooting from the field and 5-of-7 on three-pointers. His production is a welcome sight for a Knicks team that has sorely missed his production in the two weeks he has been sidelined due to injury.

“His presence on both ends of the floor. He has seriousness on offense and defense,” team captain Jalen Brunson said. “Not a lot of people have that in the NBA, and he’s one of them.”

Anunoby is back, and he’s back on frustrating opposing wings. Bane finished with 16 points on 7-of-15 shooting from the field, his most impactful play coming from a jump shot off the Knick star’s back.

“I couldn’t really see it,” Hart said. “Most of the time I was watching the replay and trying not to laugh. OG has its moments here and there, but it was hilarious.”