2021-22 Knicks Season Preview: Immanuel Quickley
A huge surprise after being picked with the 25th pick in the 2020 draft, Immanuel Quickley instantly impacted the Knicks during his rookie year. Can he improve on his finishing and playmaking and put himself on a trajectory for something much more than a role player?
Immanuel Quickley surprised many fans by outperforming his 25th overall draft slot significantly. Displaying more of an on-ball game than he had been able to show in a loaded Kentucky backcourt in college, he seized an important role on a Cinderella playoff team and, uhh… rapidly became a fan favorite. What can we expect from him this season?
2020-2021 season recap
Before last year’s draft, I wrote an extensive piece on Immanuel Quickley. Obviously at the time, I had no idea the Knicks would be interested, though the Kentucky connection and the Knicks owning a late first from the Marcus Morris trade made it a possibility. The Knicks, as always seemed to be the case (my, my, my, how the turn tables… right?), needed shooting and defense, which Quickley brought — but my thought was that he would be mostly an off-ball player. Having played with Tyrese Maxey and Ashton Hagans, his role was mostly as a spot-up shooter. He certainly was great at that, taking over 14 threes per 100 possessions and hitting them at a blistering 42.8%. But 84% of his 3-pointers were assisted, and he was not a prolific finisher at the rim.
There were hints of more potential, of course. He flashed a couple of nice crossovers, and what jumped out to me from a statistical standpoint was that he drew 9.2 free throws per 100 possessions (and of course, he was an excellent foul shooter). To put this in perspective, Jimmy Butler in his third year at Marquette drew 11 free throws per 100 possessions. This was intriguing, because this is not what you’d expect from someone who is primarily an outside shooter. Even before making the skill leap that brought him to NBA stardom, Butler was simply a beast at drawing fouls in college with his size, strength, and mentality. Quickley’s game was a lot closer to JJ Redick’s than Butler’s, so the fact that he was still able to get to the foul line so much hinted at there being more to his game than shooting.
Beyond that, it has been notable how many players come out of Kentucky and promptly show more to their game. Kentucky is often loaded with talent and players then have to fit into smaller and more specialized roles, which has been a recipe for success for Kentucky’s basketball teams, but can let certain skills fly under the radar. Devin Booker, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Bam Adebayo, Karl-Anthony Towns, PJ Washington, and Tyler Herro are just a few examples of players who have received the “Kentucky bump” upon reaching the NBA.
Add Immanuel Quickley to that list. With Elfrid Payton and Dennis Smith Jr. struggling at point guard in a preseason game against Cleveland, Tom Thibodeau inserted Quickley in the fourth quarter in an attempt to give the Knicks a little juice on offense. He never looked back.
Beginning his stint next to Smith, what was perhaps most impressive in that game was Quickley’s passing out of the pick-and-roll.
He was finding rollers for alley oops:
He was finding open shooters out of drive and kick:
He was pushing the ball and creating easy opportunities in transition:
This gave the Knicks the spark they needed, and perhaps most impressively, Quickley was able to create opportunities and have an impact even when his jumper wasn’t falling.
The momentum carried over into the regular season, as Quickley took over the backup point guard role, showing off a repertoire off ballsy pull-up shooting, quick crossovers and space creation, a knack for drawing (and OK, baiting) fouls, and a pretty floater (albeit one he fell in love with a bit too often). Although he missed several games early in the season with an injury, Quickley would announce himself on Jan. 4 against the Atlanta Hawks so loudly that half the south went to Washington two days later to complain about it (peacefully, of course!).
The Knicks fell behind by 15 points in the fourth quarter in the type of game Knicks fans are all too familiar with, characterized by a third quarter in which an impotent starting lineup goes cold and the defense gets hot. Enter Quickley and the bench. Quickley finished with 16 points in just 18 minutes, a game-high +17, and five clutch free throws late to put the Knicks ahead, including three from a foul on a 3-pointer from Knicks public enemy No. 1 Trae Young. (Side note: Julius Randle finished with 28, 17, and 9 despite going 0-5 from three. He really dominated the Hawks during the regular season. Sigh.).
Quickley sparking the bench after slow offensive starts became a theme as Payton struggled to mesh with the starters. Quickley was not only able to score effectively against bench units, he unlocked RJ Barrett and Randle in ways that the starting lineup didn’t. In 356 minutes (many of which came late in close games, a testament to notoriously vet-heavy Tom Thibodeau’s trust in the rookie), lineups with Quickley, Randle, and Barrett posted a net rating of 10.8. (It’s not an apples to apples comparison of course, but lineups with Randle and Barrett without Quickley had a net rating of just 0.74, albeit in 1854 minutes.) This is a pretty substantive sample, and it’s worth noting how much of it was driven by stylistic changes in the offense and Quickley simply providing the kind of space that Payton could not.
When sharing the floor with Quickley, Randle’s true shooting percentage improved from 56.4 to 57.8. Barrett’s improved from a bad 52.9 to a decent 55.3. Randle’s free throws attempted per 100 possessions also improved from 7.3 without Quickley to 10.2 with Quickley. For comparison, LeBron James has averaged 10.7 free throws attempted per 100 for his career. RJ also got to the line more, improving his FTA/100 from 5.02 to 7.32. Lastly, both Randle (improvement from 18.8% of shots to 23.6%) and Barrett (38.1% to 40.2% of shots) took substantially more shots at the rim with Quickley on the floor.
As was obvious to anyone who watched the Knicks last year, when the point guard can pull up from 25-plus feet, it opens a ton of driving lanes, and this allowed Randle and RJ to get easier, more efficient shots.
And the big performances from Quickley continued. Seventeen and eight against Boston (including future teammate Kemba Walker). Thirty-one points in just 24 minutes to lead a furious near-comeback in Portland.
Perhaps Quickley’s best game came a week later against the Los Angeles Clippers in a Sunday afternoon matinee at Madison Square Garden, playing against one of the league’s best teams and one of his favorite players, Lou Williams. The Clippers were one of the league’s best offenses, with Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, and an array of shooters taking the league by storm. True to form, they unleashed a barrage of threes on the Knicks. But the Knicks continued to stay at arm’s length and fight back, introducing us to a grit that we would fall in love with. The Knicks entered the fourth quarter down 10. And then it was Immanuel Quickley time.
Quickley’s floaters plagued the Clippers in the second quarter, including this one that drew a frustration spike from Paul George, who was effusive in his praise for Quickley post game:
In the fourth quarter, he went on a personal 8-0 run to bring the Knicks to within two points, capped off by this early-shot clock bomb that nearly took the roof off of MSG:
BANG! Though the Knicks would ultimately fall short, this game marked a turning point, as it showed not only that the Knicks could hang with an elite team playing its A game, but they could do it with offense as well, and Quickley was a huge part of that.
As the season progressed, Quickley would continue to mix tantalizing performances showing off his unlimited shooting range, ball handling savvy, underrated passing, and spirited defense (in spite of clearly needing extended time in the weight and film room). An inability to get all the way to the rim made his minutes and offensive effectiveness more dependent on whether his shots were falling on a given night, but even the threat of his shooting often helped the offense play well when he was having an off shooting night.
That said, there were plenty of highlights as well. Quickley’s ball handling and speed continued to keep defenders off balance, sometimes to hilarious effect:
The midseason addition of Derrick Rose would pay dividends for Quickley and help make his life easier. Though it decreased his on-ball reps with the second unit somewhat (and Thibodeau continued to start Payton with the starting lineup), Rose’s ability to provide a driving counter to Quickley’s outside shooting created a pretty special symbiotic relationship between the two. In 476 minutes, lineups with Rose and Quickley outscored opponents by a scorching 15.55 points per 100 possessions; perhaps most surprising, despite often playing in lineups with Alec Burks and Obi Toppin (neither of whom were good defenders last year, though Toppin had a lot of nice flashes), these lineups posted a defensive rating of 100.86. Now, of course, Nerlens Noel and Taj Gibson deserve the lion’s share of the credit for this, but it shows that Rose and Quickley can not only form an explosive and dynamic offensive backcourt on offense, but can also function well enough on defense to allow you to create a good defense around them (at least against bench units) despite both being undersized.
For the season, Quickley would finish with averages of 11.4 points, 2.0 assists against just 0.9 turnovers, and 0.5 steals in just 19.4 minutes per game, shooting 40% on twos, 39% on threes, and 89% from the free throw line. Despite the inefficient 2-point shooting, Quickley finished the season with a respectable 55.7% true shooting thanks to his ability to get to the line and his high-volume, high-accuracy 3-point shooting. For comparison, Ja Morant’s true shooting as a rookie was 55.6%. Fellow skinny Kentucky guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was at 55.4% as a rookie, while 2020 No. 1 pick Anthony Edwards was at 52.3%. Even rookie sensation LaMelo Ball was only at 53.9%, despite shooting the ball well from three and showing a great deal of prowess off the bounce getting to the rim.
And this was on a significant degree of difficulty. Thirty-nine percent of Quickley’s threes were unassisted. He took 2.8 3PA per game (again, in only 19.4 minutes) and shot 33.1%. For comparison, despite playing 12 more minutes more per game, noted pull-up shooter and Knicks tormenter Devontae Graham only took 0.5 more threes, but hit them at only 29.4%. In almost double Quickley’s minutes, Donovan Mitchell took nearly double the number of pull-up threes and hit them at 36.3%. If Quickley is halfway between Donovan Mitchell and Devontae Graham as a pull-up shooter, I’ll take it!
I say this not to indicate that Quickley has the same ceiling or shot profile as all these players, but to illustrate that even without the ability to get to the rim and an over-reliance on tough floaters and unassisted 3-pointers, he was still a reasonably efficient player, especially for a rookie. People who point to his overall field goal percentage often miss this and continue to cap his ceiling, underrating just how impressive Quickley was as a rookie. And to really drive it home that he wasn’t just doing this on low volume, feasting off of other players’ creation, consider that of all rookies, only Edwards averaged more points per 36 than Quickley (21.7 vs. 21.2).
Quickley’s role this season
Quickley’s role shouldn’t change too much this season from what it was during the second half of last season. The acquisition of Kemba Walker should allow Quickley and Rose to play together off the bench once again, where they clearly thrived. While Quickley was successful enough with the starting lineup last year that I thought starting a subpar player just to keep their bench unit together was a bit silly, this becomes a moot point with the addition of Walker.
Quickley should post similar numbers to what he did after the Rose addition, with a usage in the low-to-mid 20s and a shot profile that skews toward the perimeter. The Knicks do appear to be emphasizing pace and 3-point shooting this year, as a recent New York Post article reported that Thibodeau wants the Knicks to take 40 3-pointers per game this year (which would have ranked fifth in the NBA last year). This should fit Quickley and Rose to a tee, as both (especially Rose) love to push the pace, and Quickley should feast as both a trailer on threes and as a driver against scrambling defenses with easier reads.
Having said that, Quickley will likely be asked at some point to step in and play some point guard. Rose and Walker are still very talented, but both are on the wrong side of 30 (I’m 32, so I can say that) and have struggled with injuries and missed games. I still think both should be fine and high performers when healthy, but it is probably a bit unreasonable to expect both to play 82 games. The Knicks’ other options at point guard are Deuce McBride and Alec Burks, who Thibodeau turned to at times late in games when the offense was running through Julius Randle anyway.
My belief, given what has transpired in the preseason, is that the Knicks would like to see Quickley become that third point guard. McBride may still get minutes if one of Rose or Walker is out, but my guess is Quickley will take the lion’s share of the reps. Not only did Quickley play primarily on ball when the two shared the floor in Summer League, but McBride himself is adjusting to the point guard position and doesn’t have quite the space creation ability or experience of Quickley yet. And while Burks’ ball handling and shooting ability made him a viable option there at times last season, even last year he wasn’t on Quickley’s level as a passer. That gap appeared to have widened in the preseason, where Quickley displayed improved vision and versatility in the passing attack.
Even with Rose in the game, Quickley shouldered a substantial number of on-ball reps and averaged four assists per game in the preseason off the bench. With the number of dynamic mouths to feed on the Knicks (the best of problems to have), Quickley’s share of the offense may not increase numerically, but the amount the Knicks trust him to create on-ball, both this season and for his future development, appears to be trending in a positive direction. I expect him to be the third point guard while playing most of his minutes next to Rose.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that Thibodeau has stressed that it’s more important who closes than who starts. We saw last year that he was willing to trust the hot hand late, whether that was Burks, Rose, RJ, Bullock, or Quickley (and to be sure, these five were often competing for three spots late in games). I believe that will continue to be the case this year. There will be three spots for Kemba Walker, Derrick Rose, Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, Alec Burks and Evan Fournier (dear lord, have we ever been this stacked at guard?). The hot hand will play, and on some nights this will be Quickley.
What to expect and hope for this season
As noted above, the big gap in Quickley’s game right now is an ability to get to the rim. Only six percent of his shots last year came within three feet of the rim, and he was forced to take many floaters, of which he hit just 38%. The floater is a nice shot for him to have in his repertoire, but cannot be the go-to shot. Quickley’s ball handling, quickness, and pick-and-roll savvy meant he often got two feet in the paint. He’s simply got to get better results in those situations than he did last year.
Thirty-six percent of Quickley’s shots were between three and 16 feet from the hoop. Part one of bringing that down is doubling the share of at-rim attempts. He shot 61% at the rim last year, so even if that comes down to something like 55% (which would still not be great, but is preferable to most floaters), that would be a positive development and would likely drive his floater accuracy up (from having to take fewer tough ones). So far, Quickley seems to be aware of this; while he doesn’t always get a true layup, we have seen a steady increase in the 3-foot off-the-glass shot.
This is a nice job by Quickley to get the defender on his hip and use his length to extend all the way to the rim. He’s not big and will sometimes get his shot blocked, but his understanding of angles as well but the ability to change speeds, mix up his jumps/which feet he leaps off can keep defenders off balance and allow him to be more effective around the rim. Defenders will no longer be able to sit on the lob if he’s able to make this play. Note also the patience from Quickley, allowing Sims to roll to the rim, Rose to set a back screen, and put the defenders in a tough situation. Many times last year, Quickley would not have the poise and confidence to hold his dribble that long and would have either picked it up or forced a long floater.
The other part of the improved shot selection will come from passes like the above. This is a simple play and isn’t even an assist, but it’s a pass Quickley rarely made last year. Not only does Quickley recognize the weak side defender immediately and make the correct read, he throws an accurate dart right to the shooting pocket with one hand. One habit I noticed quite a bit last year was that Quickley would often have to jump and throw an overhead pass with two hands to hit the far corner. It worked often enough, but obviously is slower and may have belied a lack of a confidence from Quickley in being able to throw that pass. That appears to be gone, as he has been aggressive, decisive, and accurate on those throws.
Those two improvements would go a long way toward Quickley becoming a more efficient scorer. Whether he’s a point guard or a shooting guard long term, they unlock a different type of ceiling. If he can at least threaten the rim at times and can make pinpoint passes out of pick-and-rolls, he’s going to be a very dangerous offensive player.
Last (but as on any Thibs team, certainly not least), it would be nice to see another step from Quickley’s defense. In college, Quickley was a fearsome point-of-attack defender, using his length and agility to frustrate SEC point guards. But his lack of strength last year was exposed, as he would get bullied by bigger guards. Quickley has appeared to gain some muscle, and this confidence I believe is showing up in his aggressiveness in the paint and ability to throw passes from difficult angles. He was also aggressive rebounding the ball in preseason, and with his agility this could help him be a disruptive defender.
Quickley had a fair amount of “rookie moments” on defense, but as the season progressed he showed a solid ability to rotate and keep his head on a swivel, even willing to stick his nose in the paint against drivers attacking the rim. He still got bullied a bit, but the effort never waned; it’s another reason Thibodeau loves him, and in Year 2, with Quickley’s tools and improved physique, we should see improved, perhaps even downright impactful defense.
More than anything else, this is the most encouraging bit about Quickley. His work ethic is elite, a trait that appears to be a common thread among many of the Knicks’ players. It appears to be part of the reason William Wesley went to bat for him on draft night and part of the reason Tom Thibodeau and Quickley have such a strong bond. In light of that, I’ll leave you with the tweet below. Get hype: this star is ascending Quickley.
