On the Knicks’ untested gem of a four-man lineup, why you should want it, and why we haven’t had it
Fifty-two minutes: that’s how long the Knicks’ most promising foursome has played together this season, and that may, unfortunately, be the cap. Jack Huntley examines why — or, how? — the Knicks’ four best-fitting players have played so little together this year.
The New York Knicks are 25-27, clinging to the reputational salvation of .500 basketball by their fingernails, 52 games into this circus of a world’s circus of an NBA season. Fifty-two games is a lot of games to have stuffed and squeezed into what feels like the first 10 minutes of 2021. All told, that’s 2,496 minutes of game time that’s come and gone. Fading as quickly as a tank-drunk fanbase’s winter obsession with Cade Cunningham. Disappearing as rapidly as the already endangered and increasingly deluded populace of Elfrid Payton Island. Vanishing as thoroughly as Julius Randle’s name in ESPN’s trade machine, from the desperate preseason fingertips of Fizdale-scarred Knick fans.
It’s understandable then, amidst all the compressed happenings, not to notice something that for various rotational “reasons” and unjust injuries we should have seen but didn’t see: the Knicks’ four loudest developmental success stories — Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, Mitchell Robinson and Julius Randle — on the court together. In 52 games, this quartet of high-grade possibility has logged just 52 minutes of court time: a fart-in-the-statistical-wind sized sample. Barely even a fart actually. More like an intestinal yawn.
The lack of this lineup in our lives is a crime against happiness. A crime all the more heinous for the harmony of its theoretical positional fit. Grab a napkin as I describe this gourmet four-course archetypal meal to you. To start: an elite (even in a down year, for him) rim-rolling big. Followed by a flavorful complimentary appetizer: a rookie who has shown flashes as an elite pick-and-roll scorer. The main course: an All-NBA caliber power-wing offensive fulcrum. And for dessert: a two-way 20-year-old wing who does a little bit of everything.
It’s OK to drool. It’s an explicit lineup. It’s OK to cry, too. Because unfortunately — this season at least — it’s a hypothetical explicit lineup.
Hypothetical, but not unrealistic. Mitch this season is in the 88th percentile as a roll man, averaging 1.37 points per possession, a still elite but comparatively tepid number stacked up against the high flying and historic 1.48 and 1.66 points per possession he logged in his first two years. Quickley has been struggling of late, but is still in lofty company operating as a pick-and-roll ball handler, sitting in the 77th percentile as a scorer out of the league’s most popular play, after being firmly in the 90s most of the year. Randle’s per game averages of 23 points, 11 rebounds, six assists, on 41% from three have only been matched in one other NBA season — ever: Larry Bird in 1984-85. RJ is one of 13 players in the NBA this season with per game averages of more than 17 points, five rebounds, three assists, on 38% from three. He’s the only 20-year-old on this list. He also has one of the best 25 left hands in the history of hands.
Here’s the thing about this lineup: I love each and every one of them individually. It’s difficult not to. They’ve each, in their own way, shattered this season’s expectations of reasonable development. Mitch has all but extinguished his foul woes and is a newly-minted box-out king. IQ is an elite pull-up shooter — the single most devastating offensive skill in the modern NBA — as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie. RJ has improved from the free-throw line and the 3-point line. And Randle is some Dirk Nowitzki meets Nikola Jokic offensive hybrid creature beast-thing. An oh-so-beautiful beast-thing.
We don’t have to go into the reasons contributing to us not seeing as much of this lineup — the most important developmental lineup fit on the roster to evaluate — as maybe we should have. We don’t have to go into why the front office bought Elfrid Payton back. Or why Tom Thibadeau insists on playing him so much, and so inflexibly, with the rotational wiggle room of raw spaghetti. Or why Elf himself — a wonderful, delightful human being, by all accounts, my lawyers tell me I’m obliged to mention — is having one of the worst seasons of his career in a number of very important areas of floor-generalship. Or how to fairly distribute this depressing pie of sordid blame between all involved.
We don’t have to go into any of that. That has been well and truly gotten into already. In every puss-seething crevice of our beloved digital home: Knicks Twitter.
What we can do, on a happier and less septic note, is marvel at how the Knicks’ season has gone so unexpectedly well without these core four making sweet lineup music together. We can marvel at the surprisingly competent present, and gawp in wonder at how they might fair together in the future, next season, and beyond. Perhaps, if I may humbly suggest, with some well-chosen reinforcements. Hopefully — plague-related normality permitting — with another offseason in the developmental dojo under their belts, under the tutelage of co-senseis Johnnie Bryant and Kenny Payne (as long as Leon Rose can keep the franchise’s best crop of assistant coaches in years from being poached this summer).
It is a travesty that the injury gods, by subjecting Mitch to a likely season-ending foot fracture, only a handful of games after returning from a hand fracture that saw him miss a 15 game stretch, have robbed us of the chance of the core four having a postseason coming out party. As Tom Thibodeau’s secret playoff weapon, to be unleashed in games that matter, a not-totally-bat-shit-crazy theory, given that exactly half of their 52 minutes came in fourth quarters this season.
So, why would I bring all this up? Why would I show it to you if you can’t have it? Because it’s shiny and beautiful. Because you can see the whole universe of this season’s optimism in this untested gem of a lineup. Blues and oranges of infinite soul-piercing possibility. Because the Knicks have it — and I want it.
