OG Anunoby’s NBA Finals Tip-In Ball Is Headed to Sotheby’s. The Price Might Shock You
The basketball OG Anunoby tipped in to win Game 4 of the NBA Finals is going to Sotheby’s. The auction starts June 30. Experts are projecting it could fetch up to $3 million. If it does, it will be the most valuable game used basketball in history.
Sotheby’s is calling it “The Hand of OG.” That is a perfect name for what is now one of the most iconic moments in modern NBA history. The Knicks were down 29 in the third quarter. They came back to win Game 4 by one point. Anunoby tipped in a missed Jalen Brunson three with 1.2 seconds left. That swing of momentum gave the Knicks a 3-1 series lead and basically clinched their first title since 1973.
And now the ball is going up for auction.
The $3 million projection is bold but not crazy. Game used basketballs have been climbing in value for years. The Kobe Bryant final game basketball sold for $722,000 in 2024. The LeBron James game used ball from his Cleveland title run sold for over a million. Anunoby’s tip in ball checks every box. Iconic moment. Championship implications. Top market team. Photographic evidence. Authentication. The collector market is going to come hard for this.
Where it gets weird is the player frustration angle. Some current players are publicly upset that the NBA is auctioning off the ball at all. The argument is that game used memorabilia from championship moments should belong to the players who created them. Anunoby reportedly is not getting a cut. The NBA owns the ball, the auction proceeds go to the league, and the player who actually made the play walks away with nothing financial from the sale.
That is a legitimate complaint. The collector market for game used items has exploded in the last five years. The players who create the moments are watching team and league entities cash in. Anunoby will get rich anyway because he is an NBA player. But the principle is sound. The guy who made the play probably should get some piece of the auction.
The Knicks fan base, of course, does not care about any of that. They want the ball to sell for as much as possible because it validates how big the moment was. A Knicks fan in Manhattan is going to buy this thing and put it in a glass case. The Madison Square Garden museum will probably bid. Some hedge fund guy will probably bid. Some sports memorabilia collector in Dubai will probably bid. The market for this ball is enormous.
Sotheby’s is treating it like fine art. The press release calls the comeback “one of the greatest moments in American team sports history.” That is not hype. The Knicks erased a 29 point Finals deficit. No team had ever done that before. Anunoby’s tip in is the kind of clip that gets shown for the next 30 years.
The $3 million number might be conservative. Hot collector items have a way of blowing past expectations when the bidding starts. The Honus Wagner T206 baseball card sold for $7.25 million last year. Michael Jordan’s championship sneakers have sold for $8 million. There is real money in this market.
If you are an Anunoby fan, get used to seeing this ball in news cycles for the next two weeks. The story is going to dominate the offseason memorabilia world. And whoever wins the auction is going to own one of the most important pieces of NBA history ever sold.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
