Jalen Brunson had the better basketball season by any traditional measure — a 26-point, 6.8-assist campaign capped with All-Star, All-NBA, NBA Cup MVP, Finals MVP and the Knicks’ first title since 1973. But in 9-category fantasy basketball, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges quietly outperformed him, finishing 34th and 43rd to Brunson’s 46th, despite neither averaging more than 17 points a game. Their value came from being the perfect complements: defense, efficiency and executing their roles.
Anunoby’s Finals performance was legendary. Bridges was well worth the picks. Let’s dig into how they came out ahead of the superstar on their team, Brunson, in 9-cat.
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Defense and efficiency wins
Here’s the math behind it. Brunson had a 31% usage rate — among the highest in the league — and that kind of offensive workload comes with turnovers attached almost by design. But that’s just the surface. Brunson’s 9-cat shortfall stems from a lack of defensive and rebounding production. He’s a near-zero in blocks, modest in steals and unspectacular on the glass. And can’t forget the two turnovers a night. Anunoby and Bridges both build their case in the same core way: steals, 3s and shooting efficiency are the shared foundation that lets two sub-17-point wings outrank an All-NBA guard.
From there, the two separate slightly. Bridges never misses games and barely turns the ball over, while Anunoby pulls ahead by adding real rebounding and shot-blocking that simply isn’t part of Brunson’s game.
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That separation barely registers in points leagues, where none of this matters. Anunoby and Bridges ranked just 87th and 104th in High Score, more than 50 spots behind their 9-cat finishes, while Brunson’s scoring and assist volume kept him in the top 25.
The OG and Mikal profile?
And the part that should change how you draft: this isn’t a Knicks thing at all. Pull the league-wide numbers and the same profile shows up (see below).
Andrew Wiggins, Jaden McDaniels, Ausar Thompson and a handful of others all sitting inside the top 100 in 9-cat on sub-20% usage. Wiggins and McDaniels are the truest mirrors of Anunoby and Bridges, specifically — same forward slot, same modest box score, same quiet category impact. Thompson is the extreme version: 9.9 points a night next to a 2.0 steal average on just 17% usage.
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A few names in that group are worth a caveat, though — Collin Gillespie, Myles Turner and Donte DiVincenzo all shoot under 46% from the field, well off the efficiency Anunoby and Bridges bring, so they’re not a clean match on that specific trait. But they still check other boxes that matter here — low usage, low turnover with real steal or block production — which is exactly why they’re still worth knowing, even as outliers in shooting.
Worth noting, too, that the group is almost entirely guards and forwards — the rim-protecting bigs who’d otherwise fit this mold (Donovan Clingan, Onyeka Okongwu and Rudy Gobert) get knocked out by rebound totals alone, which says a lot about how specific the Anunoby/Bridges archetype really is.
So now what?
Back to the Knicks (it’s Parade Day after all), if I were drafting today, I’d still take Brunson near the late-second, early-third round of any 9-cat draft — the volume he provides in scoring, assists and 3s is too valuable to pass up even with the category gaps attached. But volume isn’t always king. That’s the lesson here.
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It’s the hustle guys, the ones who maximize their opportunities, shoot efficiently and limit mistakes, who quietly become the backbone of a fantasy team. Draft your stars, but don’t sleep on the role players who win you the categories your stars sometimes can’t.
