Tom Thibodeau, Immanuel Quickley, and the realities of an inevitable point guard exorcism
The time to start Immanuel Quickley isn’t in the future — it’s now. IQ’s best minutes come with the starters, and some of the team’s worst minutes come with Quickley mixed in with the bench. Jack Huntley lays out the matter-of-fact case for exorcising Elfrid sooner than later.
I’m not calling Elfrid Payton an evil spirit, exactly. But his glacial expulsion from the New York Knicks starting lineup does feel like I’d imagine a good old fashioned exorcism feels: emotionally draining, with lots of angry shouting, and impassioned tweeting about how painful it is to witness. The interminable tide of Tom Thibodeau’s stubborn reverence for veterans over rookies, though, is turning. The rookie in question continues to defy the limits of his first-year label, and exceed the expectations of his head coach. Immanuel Quickley is playing like the Knicks’ guardian angel. Now the team’s undisputed point guard finisher, the demons of Payton’s medieval spacing are on their last spiritual legs. It’s time for Thibs to finish the ceremony, and when it comes to IQ, commit to a simple strategy: more.
The Knicks have 27 3-man lineups that have played a minimum of 100 minutes together this season. The best of these groupings features RJ Barrett, Julius Randle, and Immanuel Quickley, and has a +14.3 net rating. Second best — for reference as to the Knick Big-3’s dominance — features Austin Rivers, Barrett, and Randle, and has a +8 net rating. The worst 3-man lineup of these 27 features Rivers, Kevin Knox, and Quickley, and has a -23.7 net rating.
You may look at these groupings and point to Knox as the primary culprit of futility, given that Rivers features in the second-best trio and Quickley in the best, but it’s not that simple. The 20th-ranked trio of Rivers, Quickley, and Nerlens Noel has a relatively poor -3.8 net rating, too. While the Quickley-centric bench units are struggling to keep their heads above water, despite the mercurial rook’s heroics, the Knicks’ three best offensive players — Barrett, Randle, Quickley — have excelled together, not only in a Knicks-specific context, but league-wide.
That trio and their impressive +14.3 net rating is the 68th best 3-man lineup to play more than 100 minutes of 639 qualifying combinations around the league. That Rivers, Knox, Quickley trio, by the way, is 628th of 639.
It is against this backdrop that the rationale Thibs has offered up for preferring to play Quickley off the bench, and in bench units, comes under scrutiny. The consensus justification is that playing in second units allows IQ the offensive leeway to get ball in hand reps running the offense, while both or one of Randle and Barrett get some rest. At first glance, this makes sense, as Quickley has been a devastatingly effective pick-and-roll operator for a prospect who many doubted had the handle and creation to thrive running an NBA offense.
Incredibly, Quickley is 15th in the NBA in the frequency of his possessions finished as a pick-and-roll ball handler, at 47.2%. He is getting the volume of reps as if he had the pedigree of some of the 14 names above him; guys like Chris Paul, Trae Young, and Luka Doncic. As a testament to just how productive the rookie has been, only two of those 14 — Ja Morant and Damian Lillard — are more efficient than Quickley scoring out of the league’s most popular play. Dame leads the way at 1.19 points per possession, followed by Morant at 1.06, and then Immanuel Quickley at 1.05. The Knicks’ little offensive engine that everyone said couldn’t, in the first 18 games of his career, is combining elite pick-and-roll volume with elite pick-and-roll efficiency. Only two point guards in the entire league score out of the pick-and-roll as often and as effectively as IQ, and they are both, it goes without saying, starters.
The question then becomes, how does Thibs play his best players together, and still find Quickley the reps he has clearly earned with the ball in his hands? The rookie’s performances of late have shattered the premise of any balancing act, rendering the question, in the most important fourth quarter minutes, a moot one. Thibs has been forced to ride his rookie’s often molten-hot hand, bringing Quickley in off the bench and leaving him in with the starters when he’s rolling. This is all very well and good, but is a bit reactive on Thibs’ part, and raises the bar to a ridiculous height if IQ wants to stay on the court as the starters come back in. This strategy is somewhat of a double standard for Payton — “just don’t be downright terrible” — and IQ — “you must be positively scintillating” — rather than proactively leaning into lineups that give the Knicks the best chance to win.
Part of why Quickley with the starters makes sense is in alleviating a season-long weakness of the Knicks’ half court offense: low percentage, high degree of difficulty, late clock attempts. The Knicks take 11.8% of their shots with between seven and four seconds left on the shot clock, and 11.5% with less than four seconds on the clock; both of which are the highest marks in the league by some margin. With between seven and four seconds on the clock, the gap between the Knicks and the second-placed Cleveland Cavaliers is 1.1%, the same as the gap between the Cavs and 10th-ranked Los Angeles Lakers. With less than four seconds on the clock, the gap between the Knicks and second-placed Phoenix Suns is 1%, the equivalent of the gap between the Suns and the 10th-ranked Boston Celtics.
Although this is in some ways indicative of a patient and unselfish offense, with players willing to make the extra pass (sometimes one too many) to find a better shot, for the Knicks’ 25th-ranked offense, it’s just as much a function of a half court offense that simply struggles to break down a set defense.
This is where finding more minutes for Quickley with the starters makes sense from a number of perspectives. Firstly, as a way to loosen up the defense with an uber-upgrade in spacing. And secondly, having the Quickley pick-and-roll as a late clock option when all else fails, giving him ball-in-hand reps in the process. Of course, these reps are by definition more likely to be under duress than early clock pick-and-rolls, but this may even make the reads simpler for Quickley, who is at his best when he’s being aggressive and looking to score anyway. An IQ pick-and-roll with the clock winding down is preferable to a top of the key Randle iso, and definitely preferable to a Payton pick-and-roll.
Speaking of which, the most glaring hole in Thibs’ rationale for keeping Quickley with the bench units in the name of on-ball pick-and-roll reps, is that his preferred starting option, Elfrid Payton, is finishing out of pick-and-roll 8.4 times per 36 minutes, compared to Quickley’s 10.2 per 36 off the bench. Without any schematic tweaks or tertiary considerations — we’re talking about less than two pick-and-roll reps per game as the developmentally defining difference, here. The more important difference and distinction is that Elf is in the 42nd percentile of efficiency compared to Quickley’s 84th.
Even still, looking at the point guard question purely through the prism of pick-and-roll reps oversimplifies the scope for the development of some of Quickley’s best skills playing alongside entrenched starters Randle, RJ, and Mitchell Robinson. The Knicks’ offense is predicated on multiple paint touches off of drives, a relentless barrage of drive-and-kick, until the defense bends enough for cracks to appear, or better still — breaks. The fundamentals of this scheme, for every player not named Mitchell, are as follows: 1) be a threat to shoot, 2) be able to attack a closeout, 3) make the right read, and the right pass, to an open teammate, or 4) score.
IQ can do all of these things, and will benefit from doing them more, in the company of better players, playing against better defenders. The Knicks offense is not a static one, it can’t afford to be. The purported downside of reducing IQ to a spot-up bystander playing with the starters is a myth. The Knicks are third in the league in drives per game, seventh in passes made off those drives, and fifth as a team in plays finished by a pick-and-roll ball handler — a number propped up just as much by Payton in his current role as Quickley in his.
Swapping the roles and running mates of our polar opposite point guards is about more than ceremonial starting bragging rights, and more than appeasing the tyranny of Knicks Twitter. The justification, ironically, is a core tenet of Thibsism: it gives us the best chance to win. Just like the simplicity of playing your best players more minutes gives you the best chance to win, playing your best players more minutes together gives you the best chance to win, too, and doesn’t necessarily come at the cost of development.
Time is a flat circle for the ‘21 New York Knicks: with the past, present, and future suddenly aligned. IQ may well be the spiritual tipping point to excise the demons of Knick point guards past, he’s unequivocally the point guard of the present, and if this trajectory holds — with every buttery smooth teardrop in the lane, every two-steps-deeper-than necessary clutch three, every sorcerously wooed whistle — he looks like the point guardian angel of an increasingly bright future.
