Immanuel Quickley needs to let it fly
A couple years ago, on media day, I asked Fred VanVleet if he was looking forward to playing in a more wing-centric offense that featured a lot of creation reps from Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes and to a lesser extent, OG Anunoby. VanVleet said he was a basketball player, that he was just going out there to play. Of course, over the course of the season there would be many comments made to media and a couple podcast appearances that seemed to indicate VanVleet wasn’t thrilled about how he was being used. Later on that season, the Raptors traded for Jakob Poeltl and the Raptors offense shifted into VanVleet’s hands and far more pick n’ roll.
The Raptors flamed out in the play-in — couldn’t beat Nikola Vucevic on the switch, damn — and VanVleet would go on to sign a massive deal with the Rockets. The Raptors would transition into a more guard-centric offense under newly hired Darko Rajakovic (despite the downgrade to Dennis Schroder), and eventually Anunoby & Siakam were traded. Immanuel Quickley arrived, Barnes broke his hand, and we got a lengthy stretch of #1 option Quickley that featured a lot of touches and a lot of dribbles to finish out the 2023-24 season.
This season? Well, Quickley has suffered horrible injury luck and we’ve hardly seen anything to this point. However, Barnes has taken a larger piece of the offense and all of the sudden we’re looking at Brandon Ingram in a Raptors jersey. Not to mention RJ Barrett is currently putting up nearly 21/6/6 splits night in and night out. Looking at this roster, it makes sense to expect a wing-led offense going forward, no?
Not only has Barnes become the overwhelmingly dominant on-ball presence on the Raptors (he’s averaging twice as many touches in the halfcourt as Quickley), but Ingram always used more touches (especially in the halfcourt) than CJ McCollum — who is a pretty good facsimile for Quickley — and is a relatively high touch player among wings in the NBA (100th %ile in usage among forwards 22-23, 99th %ile among wings in 23-24 and 24-25).
Louis wrote extensively about how Ingram & Barnes should fit together, but for a Raptors team that is virtually last in pull-up shooting in the NBA & especially from downtown – Quickley has the most unique skillset on the roster. Will Quickley take to the offensive role that VanVleet shirked?
Quickley took 7.1 triples per game as a Raptor last season while playing over 33 minutes per game. That would place him 31st in the NBA this season in threes attempted per game, which is really low for a shooter of his caliber. Some of that is depressed by his mechanics — he has a longer load time and a low release — which limit his ability to pull-up in a phone booth (think of Donovan Mitchell), but with Barnes & Ingram taking ownership of the offense there should be a lot of looks created.
Last season, Ingram created a lot of 3-point looks for the Pelicans, and most importantly for the likes of McCollum. Nearly twice as many per game as Barnes & Quickley connected on across their games played together. In addition to all that, Ingram created 181 3-point looks for the Pelicans out of his 718 pick n’ roll possessions last season and they shot 40-percent on them.
Spot up opportunities aren’t just catch and shoot looks, either. Gradey Dick has gotten a lot of layups out of spot ups this year, via attacking closeouts; but he’s still hit 50 triples (at 40-percent) out of spot ups, the bulk of his makes. Quickley needs to hunt triples with an insatiable hunger, for the betterment of his team. Quickley has hit 39-percent of his last 250 pull-up triples, and those can’t just be early clock pulls, or coming against lackadaisical drop defense, if Ingram & Barnes are bending the defense for Quickley he needs to shoot when he’s open, obviously, but if he can’t turn floaters into layups, he needs to turn them into threes. The best shooters get run off the line, and return to it.
Quickley will still get a lot of on ball reps going forward, of course he will, but the Raptors have a significant amount of money invested in players who don’t shoot the three well, and especially can’t pull-up from downtown. There’s a bit of a math problem in the current NBA that relates to the 3-point line, and it doesn’t mean that you have to overhaul your whole offense to reflect the extra point — the Raptors certainly don’t — but Quickley should be a bit of a hack to get the attempts and the makes up in a hurry.
When Darko Rajakovic said he wanted Quickley to take 12 threes a game, it seemed like he meant it. However, Quickley hasn’t been able to ratchet up his attempts on his own. With a wing-led offense, Quickley should have a path to bombing atomically. The Raptors will need it, whether it’s this season or next.
Have a blessed day.
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