Quickley return a sight for sore eyes, minds, bodies, and souls

IQ brought out the best in Barnes, Dick, and Agbaji

Disclaimer: Not the usual takeaways format today as I wanted to dive into the frustration that’s been felt the last few weeks with the losing streak and the hope Quickley brings. Happy new year!

The writing was on the wall, and as head coach Darko Rajakovic said, the team had hit that proverbial wall.

In expanding the roles of Scottie Barnes, R.J. Barrett, Gradey Dick, and Ochai Agbaji, among others, the Raptors learned a lot. Because of injuries, we saw Barrett expand his playmaking skills, Dick show the dynamic nature of his offensive production, and Agbaji become a shot spectrum delight.

There was always going to be a ceiling within the season on how much these players could take on, and it’s great to have identified exactly where they stand at maximum capacity. We had probably hit that mark by the end of November.

Tanking is always going to bring about frustration. Even as someone who has been in favour of playing for ping pong balls before the season began, it has been difficult to watch of late. Still, loosely borrowing from the Joker in The Dark Knight, there’s no need to panic when you know it’s all part of the plan.

Masai Ujiri said this will be a rebuilding season and it is a rebuilding season.

Considering the upcoming cap crunch with the new salaries of Barnes and Immanuel Quickley, this season represents the last chance to add a high-end talent at a relatively low cost. There is a reason teams like Oklahoma City and San Antonio have stacked up on draft picks over the next several years: the second apron tax era is going to be defined by value contracts.

This phase of the season was going to come, the frustration is understandable, but know that it will all be worth it come the 2025 NBA Draft.

In losing 11 straight games, I think we’ve seen a team that increasingly grew impatient to learn something new about themselves and had somewhat checked out over the last few games knowing Quickley was returning soon.

New year, new me, and all that jazz.

Quickley’s 15 assists:

Just as the 2023-24 season played out in segments with different iterations of the roster, we are seeing segments in terms of what we can learn. There was the ethical tank stretch of the season, followed by the unethical tank, and now we have the opportunity to learn the most important thing about this team: What Quickley, Dick, Barrett, Barnes, and Poeltl all look like together.

Barrett remained out against Brooklyn because of his illness, but even in watching four of the five together, we saw an instant improvement in the floor spacing and there were just four turnovers after a first quarter filled with miscues. Quickley finished with just a single turnover which is so impressive considering the rust factor having not played since Nov. 10.

Just as we saw Barnes’ return make life much easier for Barrett, Quickley’s return against the Nets simplified the game for Barnes. Quickley didn’t look to force his own offence, instead looking happy to create for his teammates. He finished with 10 assists, while Barnes had 33 points on 14-of-18 shooting including 3-of-4 from three. He was relieved not to be handling the ball as much.

“It was definitely nice to play off the ball,” Barnes said after the game. “I can be a little bit more aggressive rather than think about playmaking the whole time. It was nice to be able to just do that and make other reads.”

I mentioned in my previous takeaways that the Kansas duo of Dick and Agbaji had really struggled and it was great to see how Quickley’s return helped them out, too. Just by virtue of having to be picked up above the arc and even near half-court at times, Quickley created space for his teammates that Davion Mitchell and Jamal Shead simply don’t have the gravity to do.

Dick attempted eight threes, the first time he shot at least six threes in a game since Dec. 19. He finished with 22 points on 17 shots and will be breathing a sigh of relief that his shot quality will significantly improve moving forward. Agbaji had 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting while also playing excellent defence on Cam Johnson.

The Raptors have the 10th most difficult strength of schedule for the month of January. This should serve as a particularly good test of what the core group looks like against strong competition.

There will still be growing pains because of how little time the core group has actually spent on the court together, but it’s great to be back to learning something new as an observer.