How many 3-pointers should Immanuel Quickley take next season?

I was listening to my favourite sports podcast, Pull Up Tre of course, when a small side conversation caught my interest. Tre thought that Immanuel Quickley would take 10 3s a game this season. Samson thought that astronomical jump — he averaged 7.1 per game as a Raptor last year, which would have been a career high over a full season — was unlikely. But it’s a worthwhile question for a deeper look. Can Quickley get to 10 3s a game? Should he?

Some people like to talk to their friends. Some text. Some email. I’m going to become the ultimate Reply Guy and instead write 2000 words to Samson and Tre here. 

Samson correctly mentioned that Steph Curry has had seven separate seasons with more than 10 3s attempted per game. That’s wild. (Steph doing it, not Samson’s awareness of that fact.) But Steph isn’t the only one. Let’s start right at the very beginning here: who’s done it before? 

So this is pretty rarified, top-of-the-mountain stuff. We’re looking at 16 seasons in NBA history, 15 of which were accomplished by surefire Hall of Famers. (And the other one by one of the greatest shooters of all time, Buddy Hield.) I guess the easy answer is, yeah, on first glance it seems unlikely. (We’ll get into whether that’s true in a bit.) You seem to need to be one of the best three or four shooters in the league to join the list. Is Quickley there? Even his exceptional 39.5 percent from deep last season would only be mediocre compared to this company, and of course on far less volume.

Before we get there, there’s much more going on in regards to this list that is deeper than the simple question of who has hit this number of triples. Broadly, these players had some of the highest on-court offensive ratings in the league during their seasons attempting at least 10 3s per game. And their on/off offensive differentials were generally near the top of the league, most even above the 95th percentile. So there’s a ton of correlation between these seasons and outrageous team offensive success.

Now, be careful. It’s not causative. There could be lots going on. For example, perhaps these players are exceptional talents, which means they are able to attempt lots of 3s, and also they drive exquisite offensive performance. Said that way, that seems likely, but the point is that there could be a third factor that is more causative to teamwide offensive output and individual player 3-point frequency than those two impacting one another directly.

So don’t just assume Quickley getting up 10 triples a game would instantly boost Toronto’s offense to infinity and beyond. That would be chasing Goodhart’s Law … again. The better way to consider this would be that if Quickley managed to attempt such a high number, it would be a good indication that plenty is going right everywhere on the offensive end for the entire team. The point being: we can’t just look at Quickley’s skills to guess whether he’ll reach this threshold. We also have to analyze the offensive framework that will surround him. 

Let’s start with Quickley’s own abilities. 

He was already above average for 3-point attempt rate in the league, though nothing special (66th percentile as a Raptor last season.) And him launching more than seven triples per game wasn’t exactly special — it’s been done over a season 246 times in league history. So he has a ways to go from slightly above average to historically great. 

It’s theoretically possible. Quickley has a very rapid trigger when firing catch-and-shoot jumpers. One of the quickest in the league. And yet he only took 3.0 catch-and-shoot triples per game as a Raptor. (Connecting at 42.1 percent.) That’s an incredibly low frequency for a shooter of his caliber. As a point of comparison, Scottie Barnes, Dennis Schroder, and Pascal Siakam all took more catch-and-shoot triples per game as Raptors last year than Quickley. Yes, he had the ball in his hands a lot. And yes, he spent much less time playing alongside Toronto’s other creators than he should have, as a result of injury. But with his ability to screen, scamper, and score, he should have attempted far more shots off the catch. 

It’s possible to get most of the way to the 10-triples-per-game threshold on catch-and-shoots alone. Most seasons, the leader is right around 7.0 per game. Quickley doesn’t have to lead the league — point guards rarely do. But he’s missing 2.9 3-point attempts per game to join our list. The majority of those have to come off the catch. Going from 3.0 per game to 4.5 or 5.0 catch-and-shoot triples per game seems relatively achievable, putting him squarely in the top 50 for most such shots per game. He’d be comparable to other guards who initiate and also play off ball like Coby White (5.0 per game), CJ McCollum (4.8 per game), Derrick White (4.7 per game), or D’Angelo Russell (4.1 per game). 

And there’s space for such added usage in Toronto’s offense. Quickley played almost twice as many minutes last season with neither Jakob Poeltl nor Barnes on the floor than he did with both playing. Playing alongside Toronto’s best talent will help — Quickley’s corner 3-point frequency (generally, a better indicator of catch-and-shoots than pull-ups) rose when he was playing alongside either Barnes (who draws defensive attention and creates) or Poeltl (whose screens free Quickley as a cutter). We’re talking about two extra such shots a game — maybe once, Quickley scurries off of a pin-in screen from Poeltl and catches on the elbow extended, firing. The second time he stands and waits in the corner while Barnes initiates and draws the defense before the ball finds Quickley. It’s not hard to see those events scaling up. Still: twice a game, I should add, is a lot. 

The other area in which Quickley can broaden his 3-point attempt arsenal is off the dribble. He does have a slower release when transitioning from the dribble to the shot, and he’s already closer to the leaderboard here. He took 3.1 pull-up triples per game last season as a Raptor, connecting on a very solid 37.6 percent. As far as frequency, he was already just outside of the top 30 in the league. There’s less room to add more shots here. Yet the accuracy is astounding. He was more accurate on pull-up triples than renowned gunners like, well, Steph Curry, Devin Booker, Damian Lillard, Tyrese Maxey, and many more. In fact, only seven players took as many pull-up triples while connecting at the same or better accuracy. A simple ‘one more pull-up 3 a game’ would actually put him in the top 20, leaguewide. That’s plausible but not probable. Given that he’s already near the top of the league, it would make sense that he’d be closer to the theoretical point of diminishing returns than he is off the catch.

And yet when you go to the film, that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Quickley shot 40 percent on triples from 25 feet or further, which is a good solid step behind the 3-point line. When he’s aggressive with his side-steps hunting sideways space behind the line, there’s space for him to get up more shots. A closeout to take away his catch-and-shoots can easily turn into added pull-up volume when he’s looking for his shot.

The real emphasis has to be just his choosing to hunt more jumpers. Another area of pull-up bounty comes in the pick and roll. If Quickley is going to add an extra pull-up triple a game, it will come from there.

The majority of Quickley’s pull-ups last season came when his speed was a significant asset. He found oodles of pull-ups in transition, on broken plays, after offensive rebounds. Things of that nature. But in the pick and roll, Quickley generally didn’t launch right away. He took his time, saw the play evolve, got the ball where it was supposed to go. And it makes sense that he didn’t take advantage of many immediate opportunities — it was his first time running a team of his own. It takes a confident point guard to know when to call his own number. Let alone to do so repeatedly. Repeatedly taking what was so recently a ‘bad shot’ that coaches would have benched him for it growing up. So, yeah, makes sense that a first-time starting point guard wouldn’t just fire five pull-up triples a game.

But there’s paydirt to be found in the pick and roll for Quickley. The second he sees a switch lay down beneath the line, an under, a botched coverage of any kind: he should be firing immediately. From any range. 

So to make the jump, Quickley needs to take one extra jittery cutting triple a game, one extra catch-and-shoot triple created by Barnes, and one extra pull-up in the pick and roll. That’s honestly a lot. Which, to bring us back to the start, is the reason only six players in NBA history have accomplished the feat. It’s unlikely Quickley will get there. But there is a path.

The more likely path for Quickley to hit 10 triples a game will come not next season but further on down the road. Yes, Curry, Lillard, Harden, and Doncic have the majority of the seasons between them, and all are unbelievable initiators. It’s unlikely Quickley ever gets a chance to initiate with more volume than he will this season, as Toronto will hopefully add more talent going forward. And he’ll never lead a team like those four. But Thompson and Hield have a season apiece, and it’s possible that one of them offers a more reasonable path for Quickley to follow.

Thompson was a flat-out gunner on a championship team. It wasn’t his best season, but he was in an incredibly successful offensive framework that consistently funneled the ball to Thompson behind the arc. The team (largely, not Thompson himself) created advantages with relative ease, and Thompson was at the end of the river to splash it home. And Hield was more or less the only elite high-volume shooter on the 2020-21 Sacramento Kings (maybe Tyrese Haliburton counted, but his volume was fairly low early in his career). 

Hopefully for Toronto, Quickley won’t be Toronto’s only high-volume shooter — the Kings were a below .500 team that year, after all. But if he remains a Raptor by the time the team is competitive again, Thompson’s path could be Quickley’s best shot. Ramp up the catch-and-shoots (Thompson led the league that year by a mile), and trust that strong offensive principles and advantage creation across the roster will filter the ball to Quickley’s hands behind the arc with ease. Then his sidesteps, pump-fakes, step-backs can lead to huge frequency. That, in combination with much more confidence in his role — again, on a good team — and knowledge of the source of his shots, could do it. Maybe.

But for this upcoming season, consider Quickley’s 3-point attempt rate to be more a barometer of success than a cause of it. If he’s taking a lot, it probably means Toronto’s offensive structure is working well. That advantages are appearing across the court, cuts and screens are timed well, and Darko Rajakovic’s system is firing on all cylinders. Even if he doesn’t get to 10, adding to his 7.1 per game last season is crucial. The more he takes, the better for Toronto. Thresholds like 10 are meaningless — we only use a base-10 number system because that’s the number of fingers and toes we have! But it’s the principle that matters in this case. 

The more triples the better for Quickley. And as long as I’m putting 2000 words in as the Reply Guy, let’s kill two birds with one stone. Samson, Tre: let’s get lunch soon. 

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