Why the Knicks need to let Immanuel Quickley get his shots up

Knicks: When Immanuel Quickley is on the floor, good things seem to happen

Quickley’s game puts a lot of strain on defenses. We know about the shooting, but he’s also adept at drawing fouls and making nice kick-out reads when driving to the rim.

When he’s on the court with the Knicks’ other best player – Randle, Barrett, and Rose – The Knicks suddenly have a group of players who can impact the game in a variety of ways. Slashing, shooting, passing – it all shows up in the stat sheet. When Immanuel Quickley is on the court, he drastically increased New York’s expected points scored per possession (from Cleaning the Glass).

One final statistic sheds light on just how impactful Quickley is on the court. BBall reference has a great all-encompassing metric to measure players’ net impact on both offense and defense. The statistic is called LEBRON and it stands for “Luck-adjusted player Estimate using a Box prior Regularized ON-off”. I know, it’s a lot, but weighted stats like this are generally pretty accurate.

This season, among all players age 22 or younger who have played as many minutes as Immanuel Quickley, only Luka Doncic, Zion Williamson, Michael Porter Jr., and Trae Young have a higher “LEBRON” rating than Immanuel Jaylen Quickley. His rating is higher than Ja Morant’s, Deandre Ayton’s, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s, and everyone else 22 years old or younger.

This kid is a star and he needs the chance to consistently show it. Whatever “mistakes” he makes do not merit an instant benching. Not when we see other Knicks players make mistakes and get a pass because they’re veterans.

This isn’t about player development or being frustrated that Quickley isn’t playing because he’s young. This is purely about trying to win more games. Trying to show that this team can compete with the best and can make a run in the playoffs.

We’ve seen Tom Thibodeau grow as a coach and lead this group to a surprise winning season. If the Knicks want to continue to shock the world, they’ll need more Immanuel Quickley in the playoffs.