The Raptors need to continue depending on Immanuel Quickley

The weight of the Raptors offense and its failings fall at the feet of everyone, but it isn’t evenly distributed across the players’ backs. Some players are load bearing. If the offense were a couch — or better yet, a big, cumbersome sectional that needed lifting — we all know who would be lifting the the most. We know who would be squeezing a hand in, merely a presence near the couch. We know who the load bearers would turn to and say: “All you had to do was unscrew and hold the pegs, man. That’s all you had to do. It won’t fit through the frame if the pegs are there.” Couches! Basketball! Offense! You get it.

Immanuel Quickley is load bearing. His level of shooting is unparalleled on the roster. It’s as if he’s the only guy who can lift and walk backwards at the same time. Completely essential to the Raptors’ couch moving offense. So, why is the offense only +0.1 points per 100 possessions better when he’s on the floor? Well, some of the reasons that Louis applied to the Brandon Ingram of it all, apply to Quickley too. Playing against other starters, holding serve until the Raptors big minute winning lineups can crush their oppositions weaker configurations. However, the Jamal Shead & Quickley backcourt, and its immense success, lays to bare what many people have been trying to pin down about the Raptors lead guard. He is very important, but should he lead?

The Raptors regular starting lineup can score. 123.8 points per 100 possessions, around the 80th percentile. Good stuff. A bunch of good players making plays. For Quickley in particular? A lot of wide open threes, and a bevy of pick n’ roll possessions with his favorite partner, Jakob Poeltl. Swap Poeltl out for either of Collin Murray-Boyles or Sandro Mamukelashvili and suddenly the top tier scoring falls away to below average. Ja’Kobe Walter enters for RJ Barrett and things go south. The same with Ochai Agbaji. Even as Quickley, Ingram, and Scottie Barnes helm all these lineups the Raptors can’t figure out how to score the ball well enough. They do succeed however, with Jamal Shead on the floor with Quickley. How is it that a guard, in Shead, whose true shooting is below 49% — ranking him 462nd in the league and as one of the worst among rotation players — helps balance these players out? At a glance, and after deeper dives, I think it’s because it offloads the playmaking responsibility Quickley usually has.

So, how does Quickley finish this season incredibly strong? How do the Raptors best utilize one of their best players?

Firstly, they have to count on shooting variance to swing in their favor.

Quickley’s pull-up 3-pointers by year:

25/26 – 31.5% | 24/25 – 38.7% | 23/24 – 37.6% | 22/23 – 34% | 21/22 – 34% | 20/21 – 35%

So, he is underperforming his shooting talent pretty aggressively. For a Raptors team that is 7th worst in the NBA in terms of pull-up shooting EFG%, dead last in pull up three volume, and 3rd worst in the league in pull up three percentage, that improving would be… very helpful. The pull up three is one of the most transformative skills in the NBA in terms of changing defensive coverages and creating playmaking and scoring opportunities. Ingram is a good pull up shooter, but he’s in his 10th NBA season and I don’t think it’s likely that you can radically change his shot diet. A diet where he’s currently about 6 times more likely to take a pull up middy, rather than a pull up three. Quickley is the sole opportunity on the roster to improve this aspect of the offense.

Quickley’s wide open catch and shoot by year:

25/26 – 37% | 24/25 – 44% | 23/24 – 42% | 22/23 – 34% | 21/22 – 43%

In what is pretty unfortunate, Quickley is underperforming his wide open catch and shoot talent in a year where the Raptors are a good team and are relying very heavily on him. This is a shot that Quickley has typically been tremendous at making, and the Raptors have actually managed to funnel heaps and heaps of these shots to Quickley. He’s second in the whole league in terms of how often he gets to take wide open catch and shoot triples. That is a dream of a shot diet. Among the 18 guys in the NBA taking the most, he’s 17th in efficiency.

The Raptors should hope to continue to funnel these shots towards Quickley. Without any adjustments, without any trades, there should be an expectation of offensive improvement just by proxy of Quickley performing better. If that sounds too simplistic, I’m sorry, but this is the truth of it. If I had laid out this shot diet for Quickley prior to the season, everyone would’ve signed up for it. The Raptors have to continue featuring him as an off-ball shooter, and that really gets off the ground with Shead on the floor.

What the Raptors can also do is tether Quickley to a hopefully healthy Poeltl. Quickley has seen his pick n’ roll volume dwindle this year as the Raptors have other mouths to feed, but he deserves a lot of credit for slowly creeping up his efficiency over the duration of the season. A Quickley pnr possession has pumped out 1.072 points per possession this season, which is in the top 20-percent of NBA players who run them.

If we think about Quickley’s paltry 31.5% pull up triple performance this year, we have to turn our eyes to the 41-percent he’s shooting on pull ups out of the pick n’ roll. He’s always been a shooter who likes to operate at his own pace, and pick n’ roll possessions allow for that. Despite Poeltl playing close to a third of the Raptors games this season, two thirds of Quickleys made pnr triples have come with him on the floor. It’s a very important feature of the Raptors offense and Quickley’s game, and appears to be loosed almost exclusively by the Raptors large, Austrian big man. Also, on top of all of that, the passing read Quickley is most capable of making out of the pick n’ roll is the pocket pass to about 15-16 feet, and Poeltl is the only player on the roster who consistently takes that pass and turns it into points.

I think this Raptors offense, if healthy, has the potential to sit in the top half of the NBA. There is no route to that optimism that doesn’t include Quickley. The Raptors just have to believe in what has been good process, and wait on the good results. Everything indicates that it should come around. Carry that couch. Deftly slide those feet backwards. Lock your hands like a vice grip.

Have a blessed day.

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