Yahoo Sports 'He's guarded DeRozan, Beal & Jokic and done well on all of them': Nurse, Barnes and VanVleet praise Anunoby's defence
Nick Nurse, Fred VanVleet and Scottie Barnes discuss how valuable O.G. Anunoby's defence has been lately and why he was assigned the defensive match up against Nikola Jokic vs. the Nuggets.
Video Transcript
NICK NURSE: He did a good job. I think that Jokic likes to bring the ball up the floor. And OG just picked him-- didn't really let him get into that part of his game much, which is great. I thought he just worked tirelessly all night.
FRED VANVLEET: No, I told OG and DC after the game that he was going to have Jokic. I knew that, you know what I mean? That's what we've done over the last couple of years. He's had success against it, just making it look different than what he sees on a nightly basis. So that's all you got to do, is change your looks up. And I thought OG did a tremendous job on him tonight on the defensive end.
- Have you played with anybody like OG, who is able to kind of discern--
- Not really, other than myself. But not really, not seen him able to be that aggressive and be able to use his strength, his quickness, be able to make reads on the back side, and to be able to get steals and read those passing lanes.
NICK NURSE: I mean, listen, the guy's guarded, like, DeRozan, Beal, Beal, now, Jokic in four games. And he's done a great job on all of them, from a seven foot-plus guy to one of the shiftiest guards in the league in Beal. He's really a great defender, really great defender.
FRED VANVLEET: Coaching staff came up with a good game plan-- just put OG on him. He's had some success over the years of just making it tough. You can't stop a guy like that. He's hard to-- he's pretty much unguardable.
But I thought we just showed him a lot of bodies. Precious stepped in there. Even Jakob coming over to help side, and just tried to make it tough on him. So I thought we did a pretty good job.
He only had eight field goal attempts, which is good. Kept him-- he still flirted with a triple-double. But yeah, I thought we did a good job on him for the most part.
