Toronto Raptors Player Preview: Immanuel Quickley is ready for his first full season as a starter

The former sixth man for the New York Knicks is ready to take up his role as the lead guard for the Raptors for the foreseeable future.

Fresh off of inking a four year, 130 million dollar deal, Immanuel Quickley is ready for his breakout season as a starter in the NBA.

The 25 year old guard is going through his first training camp with the Raptors after being acquired midway through the 2023-24 season. Quickley immediately stepped in and filled the team’s gaping need for a true starting point guard after the Dennis Schroder experiment went haywire (or exactly as some of us had expected!!).

Prior to his acquisition last season, Quickley had yet to start for the Knicks. That was understandable with that squad being led by point guard Jalen Brunson and the combo of Donte Divincenzo and RJ Barrett filling in at shooting guard. It also highlighted the issue Quickley faced in New York. With established players ahead of him, IQ was limited to a sixth man role, starting only 27 games across his 253 game tenure in New York.

In Toronto, the only players ahead of him across the entire team are Scottie Barnes, who signed a new contract of his own on the same day as Quickley, and RJ Barrett. No longer is IQ limited in his role or his touches, he is the clear cut starting point guard and number two or three in terms of usage rate.

The young point guard is ready to break out with his new team, and his adoption of the Toronto slang and culture is already shining. We’ve had good players in Toronto, but the ones that make a true impact are the ones that truly become Torontonians. Immanuel Quickley is already doing so.

Off the court it’s clear IQ is a fit, and on the court he’s not just a fit. He’s a building block. Raptors second year coach Darko Rajakovic likes to play a fast, pass-first, find the open man and get him the ball style of play full of motion and ball movement, unlike a lot of teams in the NBA. Rajakovic’s European approach perfectly suits a young, fast, playmaker like Quickley.

The Maryland native saw a slight dip in his efficiency after joining the Raptors, which is to be expected with an expanded role. However, where Quickley flourish was his playmaking. His assist rate more than doubled with the Raptors and he finished the season averaging nearly seven assists per game, which would have put him in the top 12 of point guards league-wide if he had sustained that number across the whole season.

A stat line of 19/5/7 is pretty impressive from your third option, and even more so considering the offensive struggles Quickley found in Toronto. While the point guard continued to knock down threes at a nearly 40% clip, the same he was doing in New York earlier in the season, IQ’s bread and butter is his floater.

An average sized PG at 6’3”, Quickley has the speed and craftiness to get past bigs and finish at the rim, but not the size and strength. Instead, he established an elite floater in New York that put him with the likes of Trae Young from inside the arc. As you may remember, both Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl missed pretty much the entire last two months of the season, severely depleting the Raptors’ front court and eliminating two lob threats.

With both players healthy and ready to start the season, IQ’s bag just deepened with the ability to lob it up to either front court player, which opens up the ability to trick defences with a floater. Essentially, Quickley was a little hamstrung in Toronto without the full team healthy, and now he’s back to his best shape. Look out for a lot of pick and roll play between Quickley, Barnes and Poeltl early this season as Rajakovic will look to re-establish chemistry between his point guard and his bigs.

Chemistry between IQ and his teammates is going to be key as the main distributor, and he’s taking matters into his own hands, working out with teammate Scottie Barnes to prepare for the upcoming season (and getting kicked off of an NBA2K team).

Sounds like all is up and up for Immanuel Quickley in Toronto, eh? Well, not so fast. Throughout training camp, IQ has been wearing a brace on his left thumb due a strain. Quickley has been working out by himself to keep in shape and rehab his injury, but has yet to suit up for a pre-season game despite a report from last week that the team was hopeful to have him participate in “at least a few games.”

Now, with only one pre-season game remaining before October 23rd’s season opener against Cleveland, it’s questionable whether we’ll see Quickley in pre-season action. Either way, reports are that his status for the team’s aforementioned season opener is not in doubt.

Hopefully, this is a small speed bump in what projects to be a big season for the Kentucky alumnus. He’s received NBA award attention previously, finishing as the runner up for sixth man of the year in 2023. If all goes well personally and for the team, Quickley could be a strong contender for the Most Improved Player award, one that Raptors fans are quite familiar with!

All in all, Immanuel Quickley is locked in as a Toronto Raptor for the foreseeable future, and this is step one in the process of building a championship contender. For this season, Quickley will look to prove himself not just capable of being a true starting point guard in this league, but as one you want to rely upon night after night.