Immanuel Quickley’s bigger than basketball
2+2=5
“Quickley gives them another energy when he comes in the game; you can literally see it” Doc Rivers
“He provides a spark every time” Mark Jones
“His impact is a lot more than numbers — his energy, his pace, the spirit that he plays with” Mike Breen
Immanuel Quickley is bigger than basketball.
There’s more to it than his shooting efficiency. More than the mind bending plus-minus. More than his contributions on both ends to the best Knicks teams in decades. More than whether those contributions lead to a W or an L.
Walt Clyde Frazier has long captured the minds, hearts and ears of Knicks fans. As a player, he brought the franchise as much glory as anyone ever has. Yet even those on-court glories don’t fully express who Clyde is to Knicks fans. He’s brought style and color to gray winter days, levity to losing seasons. He’s offered grace when the Knicks offered disgrace. And he’s treated us to a warm lyrical mastery that has melted even the coldest Knicks fan’s heart.
Reducing Clyde to his statistics — staggeringly impressive as they are, —would fail to capture his place, his importance in our lives.
It would be sacrilegious to compare Immanuel Quickley to Clyde. It would be impossible for him to be as deeply embedded in our hearts or important to our lives as Clyde in just his fourth year. But much like Clyde, IQ’s impact is bigger than the numbers.
Compared to the last 20 years of darkness, IQ plays basketball like he’s Thomas Edison in a world that hasn’t yet learned the magic of electric light. Where Carmelo Anthony offered steady jab steps, pivots, rote, repetitive, known-quantity fadeaway swishes, IQ offers unpredictability, joy, ecstasy, lightning. Where for years the Knicks offered nothing beyond the expectation of loss and failure, IQ’s presence ignites expectations of pure possibility.
Many nights things don’t work for IQ. He’s had shooting slumps, troubles with decision-making, with getting enough playing time. But once in a while, like Edison toiling away in his lab, he finds the right mix of herky-jerk crossovers, defensive brilliance, high-flying floaters and unbridled, unrestrained, unstoppable joy for the game, for his team, for the moment. And the entire Garden dazzles in his luminosity.
I’ve felt a lot of things as a Knicks fan. Despair as the Spurs Twin Towers methodically dismantled our championship dreams. Amusement at Frank Ntilkina pushing LeBron James. Anticipation for new seasons and new players and new coaches. Pride at the grit and toughness of the ‘90s teams. Pride that Clyde was/is a lifelong Knick. Pride that we all stuck with the team through the dark years. But for all my years of fandom, I’ve never felt the spark, the thrill, the unbridled joy that coursed through my veins when IQ danced and paraded through TD Garden, gleefully burying the Celtics desperate attempts to claw their way back last season. And I got another taste of that magic against Miami.
And it’s not just me. Something happens when IQ steps on the court that can’t be captured by our boring old basketball stats. IQ touches the floor and Julius Randle hustles a bit more, Josh Hart somehow seems even more motivated to make the extra effort play, the ball zips, the team runs, the nets snap, the sparks crackle, even Thibs’ furrowed brow loosens up a little bit. Maybe that’s why his advanced numbers are almost impossible to believe. To us pre-Edison Knicks fans, he brings something unimaginable. IQ is electric. IQ is Joy.
