Thousands of years ago, it was predicted that NBA teams might one day play their three best players together, and the cave basketball players of old sang the Song of the Bucket. Thibs’ recent uncovering of these ancient drawings has led to a most positive development for the Knicks — playing Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, and Julius Randle together for big minutes.

Prior to March 11, when the shorthanded New York Knicks faced off against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, and Immanuel Quickley — the team’s three best offensive players — had suited up for 34 games together as Knick teammates. IQ missed four games early in the season with a hip injury. RJ and Julius haven’t missed a game yet this season — both blessedly born of bionic athletic stock — luckily for Tom Thibadeau’s men. In seven of these 34 games, the trio didn’t see one second of court time with each other. In the other 27, they played a total of 143 minutes together, or 5.3 minutes per game.

Then it happened. A serendipitous positional crunch intervened. With point guards Elfrid Payton and Derrick Rose both unavailable, Thibadeau, after a forgettable first-half flurry of Frank Ntilikina minutes, under significant circumstantial duress, unleashed Quickley alongside Barrett and Randle for 23 glorious minutes. It was a long time coming, but by quick-hooks and starting-crooks, we got there in the end, to the balmy shores of basketball strategy 101: playing your best players together.

It seems pretty simple: the more complex and diverse an individual player’s offensive skillset, the harder he is to defend. And the more of these difficult-to-defend players a team has on the floor together, the harder that team is to defend. It’s a diapers and dummies offensive principle this one: the value of what we now, in modern times, call the triple-threat. Since the very first bounce of the very first ball, the ability to pass, dribble, and shoot has been the fundamental triumvirate of hoops skills. 

NBA cavemen painted crude stick-figure paintings of the wondrous effectiveness of the triple-threat on NBA cave walls. Three little pictures of a hairy neanderthal hooper in impressively short shorts: passing, dribbling, and shooting. Gradually, centuries of shredded prehistoric ACL’s later, with offensive efficiency still measured by the tonal enthusiasm of an elder hooper’s grunt, the pictures were updated, to include not just one, but two, and — sometimes, in the most advanced caves — even three hairy hoopers passing and dribbling and shooting: together, on the same team, at the same time. Back then they called it something different. They called it the Song of the Bucket.

Millenia passed. An infinity of seconds vanished. An eternity of suns set. Then, on March 11th 2021, a Saturday, in the thunderous city of Oklahoma, in the middle of a bastard of a plague, the Knicks of New York, too, discovered offensive fire, and played Immanuel, Rowan, and Julius together long enough for them to sing the ancient and primordial Song of the Bucket.

Rowan and Immanuel sang the Song of the Bucket in transition.

Immanuel and Julius sang the Song of the Bucket in the half court.

And Julius and Rowan sang the Song of the Bucket in honor of Rowan’s debut 30-burger.

The threatening trio combined for 79 points, 19 assists, and 45 drives (as an approximation of the dribbling element of the triple threat, per NBA Tracking Data, of the team’s 59 total drives that game) in a victory eventually as emphatic as Aleksej Pokusevski — a hologram of a human — is skinny. As emphatic as Lu Dort — a tectonic plate of a human — is strong. As emphatic as Theo Pinson — a hug of a human — is happy.

The combination of Quickley, Randle, and Barrett — per Cleaning The Glass — are scoring 121.6 points per 100 possessions when they share the floor together this season, which is in the 96th percentile for three-man lineups league-wide to play more than 100 possessions together. It was a wonderful thing, against the Thunder, watching Dort — a certified defensive menace — have to choose one of Quickley or RJ to guard. He split time between the two on the night, spending 40% of the time guarding RJ and 32% of his time guarding IQ. The Knick guards gladly took turns at the grill, scorching everyone not named Lu.

The trio followed up their Oklahoman debut two nights later against the Brooklyn Nets, a team with their own offensive triple-threat. Wisely, when they’re all healthy, the Nets play Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving at the same time. This trio of offensive trios can all pass, dribble, and shoot defenses into a lightless oblivion. This fact makes life easier for each of them. They take the concept of “threat” to archetypal altitudes unfair and unknown. The Nets only needed two of them against the Knicks, escaping with a five point win. I mean that literally: escaping. On the wings of Scott Foster’s whistle, sounding the equally ancient Song of Total Bullshit. Still, the Knicks’ newfound trio of offensive pass-dribble-shoot juice logged another 31 minutes together en route to 77 points, 12 dimes, and 37 drives (of the team’s 43 total drives for the game).

Next up were the Philadelphia 76ers, and another heartbreaker, with the Knicks falling a few points short, on the wrong end of a 96-99 arm wrestle of a contest. The trio logged another 24 minutes together, to go along with 49 hard earned points, 17 dimes, and 35 drives (of the team’s 47 total).

This takes the total minutes tally for Quickley, Barrett, and Randle playing together in the last three games to 78. That’s more than halfway towards the 143 minutes it took them the previous 34 games to get to. Beyond the sheer miracle of time and reps, they more than produced in this explosion of minutes, production especially impressive for coming against the Nets and the Sixers, two of the league’s best teams who hold a combined 17-3 record in their last 20 games.

The offense thrives in the freshness of the air when these three share the floor, in the vacant pockets of space, and in sync with the increased defensive panic. Like a miner emerging from a claustrophobic few months trapped underground. These are not skills more efficiently unleashed individually. They are by their nature skills best used in tandem, to amplify the ripples of advantage they each create, expressed as an exponentially rising offensive tide, made more potent in lineups featuring more players who can do more.

Now maybe I’m just a simple being, clinging to simple concepts, but there is both statistical evidence and bouncy-ball evolutionary theory that says the Knicks play well when they play their best players together. With the caveat that I and many like me are humble grunting simpletons, it looks like the combined triple-threat of IQ, Julius, and RJ might have some offensive legs worthy of at the very least some consistent rotational investigation?

Admittedly, I could be wrong. I could very well be failing to grasp the matrix of pure nuance hiding behind the brickwork of Elfrid Payton’s value. He could, of course, just be an irresistible canvas for my drooling single-celled stupidity. If this is the case, please, if you can spare the oxygen, feel free to educate me on the subtle two-way treasures of Mr Payton, on surely one of the best contracts in basketball, a one-year, $5 million bargain in his theoretical prime. But please start your argument with, “the Knicks shouldn’t play their best offensive players together because…” — because that’s the endgame for the Knicks’ status quo rotation.

Ultimately, as the first 40 games of the season demonstrate, if Payton and Rose are both getting minutes, and if Thibs doesn’t miraculously scrap one of the tenets of his coaching philosophy — strict, platoon-like lineup groupings, irrespective of who starts and who doesn’t start — it will be tough for this roster’s best multi-skilled triple-threat trio — right now and down the developmental line — to get any meaningful run together.

A reeling Orlando Magic team, losers of eight straight, are up next. But coming down the stretch this season, who the Knicks are playing will almost be of secondary interest to who the Knicks decide to play, and under what circumstances.

I’ll just be here. Sounding a dog-whistle grunt at my TV if we ever play our best players together for more than five minutes a game, without being manhandled by the occasionally benevolent hands of hoops fate. Hoping the day when Thibs decides to dust off the hits for real comes sooner rather than later. Drawing on my cave’s walls, stick-Knick-figure memories from the Song of the Bucket.