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.
Not my nikka Big Dikk Tom Thibodeau
Fred Katz knows how to throw salt on the wounds.
