Obi Toppin, Immanuel Quickley, and Big 3s
Big 3s aren’t always of the LeBron/Wade/Bosh variety. If we look to the past, sometimes the key finishing piece to a great team is just a player that does the dirty work and provides a spark. Could Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin be that for these Knicks?
Scottie Pippen has been in the news on and off for about a year and a half complaining about how the Michael Jordan commercial The Last Dance portrayed MJ’s second banana. Pippen says Jordan was unquestionably a superstar, but that what made him Michael Jordan: Serial Winner were his Chicago teammates, led by Pip. Not only is Pippen correct about Jordan -- let MJ spend the 1990s with Charles Oakley or Rik Smits as his co-pilot and see how many rings he wins -- but he’s correct about himself, too, though sadly or to his benefit, it’s a truth most don’t find interesting enough to bother looking for.
Much of the world remembers the Bulls dynasties as Jordan and the Jordanaires. Pippen wants that amended to “Jordan, Pippen & Associates.” The truth is two Chicago teams were able to threerepeat within eight years, something no team had done for a quarter-century, because they featured Big 3s: Jordan, Pippen and Horace Grant followed by MJ, Scottie and Dennis Rodman. Both Bulls dynasties hold their own when viewed alongside the Big 3s to emerge in the decades since.
That last column, the one that looks like that small wrinkly grape you find in grapes? That’s RJ Barrett, Julius Randle, Kemba Walker, and Derrick Rose. Every team on that list was expected to win a championship, if not championships. These Knicks are not. But the structure of the Chicago Big 3s and the history of Knick success over decades intersect to offer a blueprint for one way the Knicks can significantly raise their ceiling without spending $35 million a year and/or a half-dozen future firsts — plus pick swaps, natch — to land the long longed-for messiah.
While the Jordan and the Jordanaires label was never fair, it was never taken seriously by millions of people, most of whom actually, you know, watched the games. And while there wasn’t a big sample size to draw from, it’s good to remember how things turned out for 1995’s Jordan, Pippen and Associates, the one year the two played without a four-time All-Defense big man in Horace Grant or eight-time honoree and two-time Defensive Player of the Year Dennis Rodman. Toni Kukoč did a lot of good things, but a team built around him and Will Perdue as its primary bigs was something even Jordan and Pippen couldn’t transcend. And how.
Grant and Rodman were force multipliers: everything they did — and, just as importantly on a team with one or two big egos, everything they didn’t try to do — allowed their teammates to focus on the things they did best. That went for all their teammates. Jordan and Pippen hit the heights they did in part because Rodman and Grant’s grunt work left them free to fly. It also ensured a baseline quality of defense and rebounding that allowed the shooters more energy to focus on shooting, the initiators on initiating, etc. Neither Grant nor Rodman were players you’d build a franchise around, but they’re no less essential than the players you would.
Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin may never be one of those players franchises build around, but both have shown some trends that could prove meaningful not only in 2021-22, but for years to come. One early positive for both: their assists are up from their rookie season while their turnover percentage has held steady. That suggests the game has slowed down for them, which could — could — mean these developments are here to stay.
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