Immanuel Quickley: Why our preseason Point God already deserves a statue
Sample sizes? Who needs ’em? Jack Huntley reacts to Immanuel Quickley’s breakout third preseason game, and why he could be the beacon of hope that Knicks fans have been waiting for.
Are you dreaming the same dream as me? The one where a point guard, in the employ of the New York Knicks — infamous NBA point guard graveyard — bent a game to his offensive will with his ability to shoot the basketball, like a beautiful force-wielding orange-and-blue Baby Yoda? Wonderful, isn’t it, this dreamworld. Immanuel Quickley, Knicks preseason rookie sensation, already deserves a statue.
Don’t listen to the people who are grumbling about preseason standards, about G-League opposition, about perspective. They don’t understand. They weren’t there. They don’t know what we’ve been through to get here. This is about more than a 21-year-old scoring nine points and bagging seven dimes in a meaningless December preseason comeback against the Cavaliers of Cleveland.
This is about shooting. Yes. That mythical beast. Shooting. Positionally functional shooting. It’s as good as we dreamt it would be, that sweet, sweet offensive real estate. A wonderful and transformative discovery for the franchise, really. A momentous day. Something like discovering sliced bread in the morning, inventing the wheel in the afternoon, and then bumping into your soulmate on the way home from work.
For many a Knick faithful, at least those cursed with functioning eyeballs, Wednesday night’s fart of a win didn’t merely touch a nerve; it yanked on the sensitive bastard with a firm two-handed grip, dragged it to a nearby lake, tied it to a sturdy branch, and used it as a rope swing. For most Knicks fans, the only offseason imperative prior to the 2020-21 season was to acquire a point guard who could shoot. That’s it. Just someone to allow RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson to play with a modicum of NBA spacing, after a year spent playing alongside Elfrid Payton and Julius Randle — two of the worst volume 3-point shooters of all time.
The Knicks’ front office — as predictable as the exploding population of Immanuel Island — re-signed Payton and didn’t trade Randle, in a skull-pummelling homage to that tired definition of insanity, that continuously allowing an elephant to relieve itself in a human toilet, will consistently require visits from the local plumber.
Last year, the Knicks were the worst 3-point shooting team in the NBA. With possibly the worst shooting point guard rotation of the last decade: Payton, Dennis Smith Jr., and Frank Ntilikina. Point of attack offensive spacing matters in the modern NBA. Having a non-shooting point guard surrounded by mostly non-shooting teammates is debilitating, for everyone involved, like starting every possession with 14 on the shot clock.
This matters, on a very basic level, for fans who watch every second of Knick basketball, every season, no matter what. Enjoyment matters. Payton’s positive on/off numbers do not matter if they come with the condition that watching him play is like chewing gravel for 48 minutes. It’s like playing pickup with a ball that’s noticeably flat. It doesn’t matter how nice the court is, or how good your teammates are, it’s just needlessly difficult.
This is the background against which Quickley entered our lives. The overreaction is testament to the depth of catharsis that comes with a long overdue and finally level offensive playing field. It’s also testament to how organically likable our less-heralded first round pick is, even before his heroic preseason competence.
The 25th pick in the 2020 NBA Draft isn’t only an elite shooter. He has an elite name, too.
If I was a point guard, and was good enough to play in the NBA, I’d probably call myself Immanuel “IQ” Quickley. I’d be living in a quite lovely fantasy land, obviously, and so would presumably have complete dominion and dictatorial control over the details of my made up dreamscape. In choosing a name fitting of this theoretical NBA-me, a true Point God, from all the millions of possibilities, Immanuel Quickley would make a lot of sense.
Much more sense than the name Chris Paul — the NBA’s Point God incumbent — which is just two mediocre first names plucked out of a mediocre name hat and stuck together randomly in an arranged marriage of boring, more the name of every 100th attendee of The Annual Wallpaper and Laminate Flooring Convention — somewhere in Omaha — than the name of an omnipotent floor general. Step aside CP, your name and initials have been usurped; at least they have here, in the long-abandoned Mecca, a city perpetually pining for a Point God, one with the necessarily proportioned cojones to call our own.
Immanuel Quickley is a name that oozes point guard. It’s layered, you see. The instant reaction, appropriately, is that small-in-stature basketballing humans benefit from the ability to move rapidly. With pace. Quickly. The initials, “IQ”, evoke the necessary brains to go along with the blink-quick A-to-B brawn. Speed without smarts looks a lot like Ish Smith, which isn’t a knock on Ish, who is fine (please calm down, Clyde, you beautiful man, wherever you are), but is far from a Point God type of point guard.
As well as being blessed with a spectacular name, Quickley has offensive counters to go along with his long-range offensive specialty. After only 34 minutes of preseason action, it’s clear that IQ is more than comfortable attacking closeouts. Then confidently lobbing it to a teammate at the rim. Or kicking it out to a shooter on the perimeter. Or launching a pillow-soft floater inside the paint. He makes simple reads out of the pick-and-roll, reads made infinitely easier because his shooting ability forces defenses to actually go over the screen. Funny how the effectiveness of a pick-and-roll improves when the pick serves its intended purpose, isn’t it?
With a 6-foot-10 wingspan and a strong, wiry frame, Quickley is a disruptive defender. As the fourth quarter comeback gathered momentum, he would start numerous defensive possessions with some enthusiastic clapping at the halfway line, eager to get a stop, genuinely invested in the defensive end. A point guard who can shoot, pass, and defend: what is this wizardry? These happy tears? This upside-down delirium? No wonder it feels like a dream.
Maybe this is all we’ll get, for a while. Pockets of minutes, sprinkled into a busy season and a busy backcourt rotation. We all know Thibs doesn’t play rookies, right? But even Thibs sounded like he was thawing to the idea, the blasphemous notion, of starting a rookie at point guard. In his postgame press conference on Wednesday, he gushed over “Quick’s” play, defending the diverse shapes, sizes, and skillsets of the modern day NBA point guard. He was almost talking himself into the idea, rationalizing it on the fly, taking a few baby steps towards accepting what many fans hope is inevitable.
Thibs said of Quickley, “I think you can put the ball in his hands.” Immanuel said of himself, “I’ve been a point guard my whole life.” And Knick fans everywhere whispered to the Basketball Gods, “Thanks for remembering we exist.”
He has been described as having a Kawhi Leonard-like work ethic by college scouts, which will surely continue to grab the attention of infamous hoops psycho Thomas Joseph Thibodeau, who we know is drawn to fellow hoopaholics. Theirs is a basketball bromance that will continue to blossom in practice, behind closed doors, even if it doesn’t carry over to the regular season immediately.
Maybe Thibs, deep down, feels as Knicks fans feel — through some powerful telepathic osmosis — that IQ at the point is the best available solution on the roster. He really might make the most sense — emotionally, aesthetically, competitively — running the show in this tank-shaped season. Everyone concentrate now. Close your eyes. Think happy Quickley-themed thoughts. Together, we can nudge Thibs, by the power of a thousand prayers, in the direction of our preseason Point God. We can do this. For the love of everything not named Elfrid, we can do this, we can turn this preseason dream into a regular season reality.
On the off chance the telepathy doesn’t work, we should build him a statue anyway. Lots of statues. One for every 3-pointer Payton and DSJ burp up as starting point guards this season. As a slightly less subtle reminder that we’d rather not chew gravel, thanks. Because nice Knicks things deserve to be celebrated. Because he’s got an all around game that might just live up to the expectations of his 99th percentile name. But most of all, for a team long stuck in 3-point purgatory; simply because the kid can shoot the hell out of the ball.
