Quickley’s return could unlock something special in Barnes’ game

TORONTO – It was a sight for sore eyes, a sequence that Raptors fans could only dream about amid one of the worst stretches in franchise history.

With 11 minutes to go in Toronto’s New Years Day game against the Brooklyn Nets, Immanuel Quickley grabbed a defensive rebound and pushed the ball up court.

The point guard blew by a Nets defender and drew the attention of three more as he dribbled into the paint. At the same time, Scottie Barnes was cutting backdoor towards the rim. With pinpoint timing and precision, Quickley threw him a no-look over the shoulder lob, which the all-star forward slammed home with ease.

The game still hung in the balance at that moment, but that wouldn’t be the case for long. The Raptors went on to outscore Brooklyn 36-22 in the fourth quarter, with Barnes and Quickley combining for 18 of those points and nine of the team’s 12 assists, as they put the finishing touches on their first win in nearly a month.

24 hours earlier, the club was licking its wounds, fresh off its most lopsided defeat ever – an embarrassing 54-point drubbing at the hands of the reigning champion Boston Celtics – and its 11th straight loss.

Now, Barnes was shimmying after draining a three-pointer in front of the Nets bench and Quickley was doing his customary skip celebration up the court as he iced the game in the closing minutes.

“Winning is fun,” Quickley said after playing his first game in almost two months.

“It’s a big day for us,” head coach Darko Rajakovic said beforehand. “It’s the start of [the] new year. It’s a new year, new energy. And what better way than adding [Quickley] to our lineup and having him back?”

What a difference a turn of the calendar and fresh outlook make. A far more forgiving opponent also doesn’t hurt, but mostly, it’s nice to have a true point guard on the floor.

Quickley had missed the previous 22 games with a partially torn UCL in his left elbow – an unusual injury for a basketball player and one that’s more commonly associated with pitchers in baseball. A thumb sprain sidelined him in training camp and for most of the pre-season, and then a fluke pelvic bruise – which he sustained in the first game of the campaign – cost him eight contests.

Wednesday’s game was just his fourth of the season and his second with Barnes. Toronto’s two best and most important players had only shared the court twice in the last 10 months, and not since an opening-night loss to Cleveland, but they didn’t seem to miss a beat. Barnes scored a game-high 33 points to go along with 13 rebounds and five assists, while Quickley finished with 21 points, 15 assists and just one turnover in 32 minutes. Given that the team invested north of $400 million in that duo over the summer, it was an encouraging reunion.

“It was amazing,” Barnes said following his team’s 130-113 win. “The intensity that [Quickley] brought to the floor tonight, on both ends of the floor, it was great. Something that we really missed, and we needed. His playmaking ability, his ability to get to the paint, his shooting, all that, we needed it.

"His leadership, he was unbelievable talking throughout the whole entire game today. So, you know, we really missed it.”

Barnes has had an uneven start to his fourth NBA campaign. He’s also battled a series of injuries, missing 11 games with a broken orbital bone earlier in the season, and another two due to an ankle sprain. Recently, he’s been limited by the ankle, as well as a hip issue that he’s played through. He was asked to carry a substantial workload in the absence of Quickley, generally operating as the team’s primary creator and de facto point guard, to mixed results. While Barnes is averaging a career-best 6.8 assists, he's also committing 3.8 turnovers per game, his most ever.

It's not that he can’t do it. His ability to see the floor and make plays, at his size and with his versatile skill set, is what makes him a special player. But asking him to do it full-time detracts from some of the other things he does well – using his quickness to attack off the dribble, his strength to overpower at the rim or his length to shoot over defenders in the short mid-range.

As he gets healthier and spends more time playing next to Quickley, he shouldn’t have to work as hard to create for himself or others, or settle for long jumpers – he’s shooting 29 per cent from three-point range (down from 34 per cent last season) on 5.7 attempts, the most of his career.

On Wednesday, Barnes didn’t shoot a three until the third quarter (although he did throw a 34-foot lob pass to Ochai Agbaji that went in and was credited as a three-pointer in the first quarter). He went 14-for-18 from the field and made all eight of his attempts at the rim. Quickley assisted on five of those buckets and only one of them required Barnes to take a dribble.

The first came from Barnes simply beating his man up the court, with Quickley throwing a dart to get him a layup. They connected again on a similar play a few minutes later; this time IQ was just crossing halfcourt as he threw a 45-foot entry pass that reached Barnes in stride under the basket. With respect to Davion Mitchell and Jamal Shead – the team’s other, more defensive-minded point guards, or RJ Barrett, who has improved as a playmaker - those are not opportunities that Barnes would have had very often these past couple months.

“It was definitely nice to play off the ball,” Barnes said. “I can be a little bit more aggressive rather than just thinking about playmaking the whole time.”

“It just makes things easy. We're not doing [anything] too crazy out there. Just making reads… I'm pushing my man up and he throws it right over the top – he did that about two or three times today. So, just making those easy reads, and [with] his IQ, he's able to make those passes and make those reads.”

That’s what Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster envisioned when they acquired Quickley from the New York Knicks in the OG Anunoby trade last December, and when they signed him to a five-year, $175 million contract over the summer.

They saw him as the perfect complement to Barnes, their young franchise player – two versatile stars that could play on or off the ball, alternate lead guard duties and bring out the best in each other.

“I think there are times in the game where Scottie is bringing the ball up and I'm playing off the ball and I can be aggressive, and then there's times where I have the ball and you see where I can get into the lane and make a play for Scottie,” Quickley said. “But playing with Scottie is really easy. He does everything at a really high level – defensively, offensively. Whatever we do, wherever we are on the floor, he makes it easy for me. I don’t have no problem playing with Scottie.”

A 25-game sample size together last season was inconclusive. They showed some promise as a duo but, understandably, building chemistry was a work in progress when Barnes went down with a season-ending hand injury in March, with Quickley’s best stretch as a Raptor coming after that. However, they spent considerable time with one another over the summer, training on the court and bonding off it.

Finally, they should get the chance to show what they can do together, and suddenly, a Raptors season that felt completely and utterly lost a few days ago has new meaning. Regardless of what the record looks like when it’s all said and done – they’re 8-26 through 34 games – they need to see whether their two co-stars can develop in tandem.

“I do understand where we’re at as a team, and I do understand where we’re at as an organization,” Rajakovic said. “I do understand what we are trying to achieve. This is a process. This is not one game, two games, five games. This is a journey that we're on and obviously you want to have all the guys healthy and able to play at their best level so you know what you actually have and how they complement each other and how they can make each other better.”

Naturally, it will take Quickley some time to get back into game shape – he was on an unspecified minute’s restriction in his return – and shake off the rust after a long layoff, but his mere presence gives the team a much-needed lift and changes its playing personality.

His ability to run the offence, push and control the pace and spread the floor should take pressure off everybody, allowing them to thrive in more natural roles. From Gradey Dick, Jakob Poeltl and Agbaji, who were all excellent on Wednesday, to Barrett, who has been out with an illness but could be back for Friday’s game against the Orlando Magic, a lot of guys stand to benefit, but none more than Barnes.

As good as he was over the course of his all-star campaign a year ago, and while he’s continued to make strides this season, there’s another level that the 23-year-old can reach. Quickley’s return could be the key to unlocking it.