Why Knicks aren’t playing their best lineup, which includes Immanuel Quickley, more
Fred Katz
OKLAHOMA CITY — Until late Wednesday night, Immanuel Quickley trekked through life unaware that he was part of a wrecking crew. Once he learned it, a man who studies the game obsessively couldn’t quite put into words why he and three other New York Knicks eviscerate opponents whenever they play together.
When Quickley, Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Julius Randle share the floor — whether that fifth guy is Isaiah Hartenstein or Mitchell Robinson — the Knicks vaporize whoever stands in front of them. Yet, following Wednesday’s 129-120 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Quickley couldn’t quite explain the dynamic.
“Maybe we just have good chemistry. I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe, we just connect. I don’t know. Good basketball players on the floor playing hard.”
But the news to those other than Quickley following the defeat, which dropped the Knicks to 17-13, wasn’t that New York may have a death lineup. Instead, head coach Tom Thibodeau chose to go away from it.
At times, deviating from the fearsome foursome has worked, such as on Monday, when Thibodeau subbed RJ Barrett in for Quickley with three and a half minutes to go in regulation, a controversial move, considering Quickley was firing flames from his fingertips — 20 points in 22 minutes on 7-of-10 shooting. Thibodeau justified the switch after the game, disclosing that he sent Barrett back in because of the 23-year-old’s length. And on that day, it worked.
Barrett, who was already in the midst of his best performance in a couple of weeks, played a strong defensive final few minutes, and the Knicks downed one of the league’s best squads, the Milwaukee Bucks. But when a nearly identical scenario played out two days later, the results were far from equivalent.
With 4 minutes to go in the loss to the Thunder and the Knicks down seven, Thibodeau once again pulled Quickley, who was once again on a scoring binge: once again 7 of 10 with 22 points this time in 25 minutes. And once again after the game, Thibodeau said that Barrett gave the defense more length, which helped in this case because the Knicks were switching more than they usually do against Oklahoma City’s dearth of wings.
It was as if the basketball gods had placed us all into a simulation.
But on Wednesday, whether because of Barrett’s presence or not, the Knicks cratered upon the exit of Quickley. A sloppy inbounds pass and a clanked open 3 — both from Barrett, who was 0 of 6 from there at that point — did not help the cause. The Knicks lost. And 30 games into the season, it’s fair to wonder, is it time to give their best lineup more burn?
The numbers, if Quickley knew them, might shock him.
The Knicks outscore opponents by 26.5 points per 100 possessions this season when Brunson, Quickley, Hart and Randle share the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass. The defense is elite. The offense turns into the Kevin Durant Golden State Warriors if they had invented a time machine and added Michael Jordan.
Beyond just the point differential, which is the best in the NBA among four-man lineups, the numbers are staggering.
They are scoring 134.5 points per 100 possessions. That’s also the best in the league. Think about it like this: A 134.5 offensive rating is the equivalent of a team taking a 3-pointer on every possession and hitting 45 percent of them. Or to frame it another way, Zion Williamson, a boulder disguised as a human, is shooting a hair above 67 percent from the rim this season, which means this group is scoring well as if every possession ended in a Williamson layup.
It’s not like they’re succeeding because of unsustainable 3-point shooting, either. The crew is making up for missed shots with swaths of offensive rebounds — which is no fluke, given Randle’s and Hart’s as well as the centers’ prowess on the glass — and a parade of free throws.
“I think that lineup is versatile, defensively and offensively,” Hartenstein said. “You’ve got multiple guys offensively that can create their shots, but then you’ve got guys like me and Hart that connect the team together. A lot of different ways we can play. Got guys like Quick, who is a pest. Hart (is) the same way. Just the size, too. You’ve Josh at the three, Julius at the four and me at the five. Jalen is Jalen.”
There’s the injection of pace, too.
Quickley and Hart are the Knicks’ speedsters, grabbing rebounds and flying down the court. Add them to the team’s two best players, Brunson and Randle, and toss in Hartenstein’s passing, screening and snapshot decision-making, and the stew begins to boil.
This isn’t new, either.
Brunson, Quickley, Hart and Randle played 228 possessions together last season after the Knicks acquired Hart in February. The team was plus-20.6 per 100 possessions then.
Thibodeau used the foursome with Taj Gibson, which didn’t go as well, in the second quarter of the Thunder game and then again with Hartenstein for part of the fourth. And yet, come the finale, Thibodeau tends to look elsewhere.
The Knicks know they have a minutes crunch. Whenever a reporter asks about lack of playing time for one of the guards — whether that’s Quickley, Donte DiVincenzo, Quentin Grimes or someone else — Thibodeau responds similarly, invoking “sacrifice” without providing much more detail.
This rotation is filled not just with quality players but also with overlapping skills. Quickley is a smaller energy guard, but so is Brunson, and so is DiVincenzo and so is Grimes, though they of course all differ in their ways. On any given night, various Knicks could believe they deserve more playing time than they receive.
“You’re asking guys to sacrifice because you can only put five out there,” Thibodeau said Wednesday. “And so, that’s the way you roll with it. We need everyone.”
But it stands out for some more than others, especially on Wednesday night, when Quickley, who has spent more time on the bench this season than on the floor, was bouncing around on defense and draining any jumper he released while Barrett struggled. And now, the Quickley quandary has officially been upgraded to a Quickley quagmire.
After finishing second in the 2022-23 NBA Sixth Man of the Year voting, the 24-year-old is playing five minutes fewer in 2023-24 — only 23.9 a game. This is despite his efficiency, scoring and usage all rising as his defense maintains. Once again, the Knicks are far better when Quickley is in the game than when he’s on the bench, a staple for the organization’s plus-minus savant ever since he entered the league.
Thibodeau has shied away from specificities whenever asked about Quickley’s minutes, instead reiterating more generally his points about sacrifice. But he looks at the lineup data. He has said various times that point differential per possession is the “most important” statistic.
On its face, you wouldn’t know that just from the way he rotates Quickley. But the Quickley dilemma is more complicated than leaving an important player in his seat for more than half the game. Let’s go back to Thibodeau’s reasoning for the Barrett substitution in each of the last two games: He wanted more length on the floor.
It’s no secret the Knicks, who are without a giant wing, are overflowing with guards. Brunson, Quickley, DiVincenzo, Grimes, Hart and Barrett all fit the description. But Thibodeau has created two factions within those six players: The smaller smalls — Brunson, DiVincenzo, Grimes and Quickley — and the bigger smalls — Hart and Barrett.
During just about every important moment for the Knicks, at least one of the bigger smalls is in the game.
Either Hart or Barrett has been on the floor for 93 percent of New York’s possessions this season, per Cleaning the Glass. And when both are on the bench, the Knicks have tripped over themselves, getting outscored by 19.6 points per 100 possessions.
The defense falls off a cliff without Barrett or Hart around. Put Thibodeau on truth serum, and he would probably point to all those stubby arms alongside one another to explain the Hart-less, Barrett-less shellacking. And thus, the Knicks end up with an even crunchier playing time crunch than they could otherwise have.
A team has 240 minutes to hand out. Forty-eight of the Knicks’ go to the centers. Another 48 go to Hart and Randle at power forward. Brunson plays 36. That leaves mere scraps, only 108 minutes, for most of the roster — but the big smalls will soak up darn near 48 of them at small forward. And thus, you’re left with the tinier guards not playing as often as it seems they should.
And yet, none of this applies to the Knicks’ best lineup, considering their fantastic four already includes one of the big smalls, Hart.
Chances are, the numbers would come down if that group were to play more. Part of the reason it annihilates whoever is in its path is because it spends time facing reserves. If Thibodeau were to close with it, matching it up against other teams’ best lineups, the net rating may take a hit.
But the Knicks won’t know for sure unless they try it. At this point, the evidence that New York has one lineup that is substantially better than the rest is becoming too overwhelming to ignore.
12/28/2023 1:37 PM