NEW YORK — The New York Knicks won the championship. That is the first fact. The second fact is that one of the players who was instrumental in winning it has now declined his contract option and is, as of this morning, a free agent. The third fact is that everyone involved is describing all of this as “normal.”

OG Anunoby was, by any reasonable measure, the reason the Knicks won the title. CNN’s summary put it plainly: “OG Anunoby’s heroics sent the Knicks on their way to the NBA title.” He was the defender, the closer, the guy who showed up in the moments that mattered. And then, in the week after the confetti settled, he made the call that has basketball Twitter in a state of mild, professional shock: he is opting out.

"He won the ring. He put on the ring. He looked at the ring. He decided the ring, and the team that won it, were, to be generous, a great experience. And he walked away from the $19.9 million."

The number in question is not a small number. Nineteen point nine million dollars is not a number a person opts out of the way one opts out of a movie ticket. It is a number a person opts out of for a reason. The reason, as reported by Good Morning America, is the one that always shows up in these stories: the market. Anunoby is, in the estimation of his agents, worth more than nineteen point nine. He is, in the estimation of exactly one team in the league, worth the maximum. And he is, in the estimation of the Knicks, a free agent as of this morning.

THE OPT-OUT: A TIMELINE

  • June: Knicks win the title. Anunoby is, by all accounts, the reason.
  • July: Anunoby celebrates. Anunoby rests. Anunoby, in a private meeting, begins to do the math.
  • August: The math is done. The math has a winner.
  • This morning: Anunoby opts out. The Knicks, in a statement, say they "appreciate" him. The word "appreciate" is doing a lot of work in that statement.

There is a tradition, in the NBA, of players who win a title and then immediately try to get paid like they won two. It is not a proud tradition. It is, however, a very common one, and it is the one the Knicks are now navigating, because they have a front office that would, in a different universe, have been happy to pay Anunoby nineteen point nine for the rest of his career, and a free-agent market that has, in this universe, decided he is worth more.

The Knicks are not, to their credit, panicking. They are doing the thing that teams do when a star walks: they are “evaluating their options,” which is the phrase the front office uses to mean “we are looking at every player who is not Anunoby and deciding if we can live with them.”

At press time, Anunoby had not yet signed with a new team, and the Knicks had not yet said whether they would try to re-sign him, and the basketball world had not yet figured out what to feel about a man who won a championship and then, within the week, decided he would like to be paid for it like he won a second one.