Well, that escalated … Quickley.
What we were told a week ago was a slow-moving trade market suddenly flung wide open on Saturday, as the Knicks and Raptors got trade season underway with a fairly major five-player deal with six weeks of shopping remaining between now and the NBA trade deadline.
In the end, the Knicks and Raptors needed each other so much that even a ridiculous lawsuit couldn’t stop them from cutting a deal. For both, the need was strong to make a particular type of deal centering on a poorly-fitting impending free agent, one that was neither an “all-in” splurge nor a sell-off for draft capital. It led to a good old-fashioned player-for-player trade that leaves both rosters in a better place.
The trade, which the teams confirmed on Saturday afternoon, will send RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley and Detroit’s 2024 second-round pick to the Raptors in return for OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn.
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Raptors-Knicks trade grades: OG Anunoby heads to New York for RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley
At the margins, it seems as if Toronto made out better from this than New York did, but both teams are in better shape now than they were 24 hours ago. Let me walk through the particulars first and then move back to the wide-angle view.
For starters, the common sense of this deal was overwhelming. Both Quickley and Anunoby are free agents this summer, and both would offer expensive duplication of skills already present on their rosters in the absence of a trade. For New York, paying Quickley plus-starter money makes little sense as long as Jalen Brunson is dropping 50-burgers. The positional overlap in small scoring guards is just too great. For Toronto, Anunoby heavily duplicated skillsets found in two better players of roughly the same size in Scottie Barnes and Pascal Siakam, while the Raps foundered with poor shooting and a limited guard position.
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Quickley, then, allowed the Knicks to check other boxes. New York needed to upgrade its small forward position, get bigger in general and get another big guy for the rest of this season to alleviate the loss of Mitchell Robinson. They checked all three boxes in this deal, turning Barrett into the bigger and more defensively stout Anunoby, and adding Achiuwa as a rotation-caliber frontcourt reserve.
Toronto, meanwhile, needed a real guard and somebody, anybody, who could be genuinely threatening from beyond the 3-point arc. The Raptors also gained some salary certainty going forward for a roster laden with question marks. Indeed, one reason the Raptors were so inscrutable for rival teams was that neither a classic sell-off for draft picks nor a push all-in with their own picks were the right move for Toronto. What they needed was to wave a magic wand and turn Anunoby into a backcourt player. They just did it.
Before we go further, here’s the contract nitty-gritty on the five principals:
- Anunoby makes $18.6 million and can (and almost certainly will) opt out of his deal after the season and become an unrestricted free agent. An All-Defensive Team-caliber defender at either forward spot, he gives New York more size and, at age 26, presumably is part of the Knicks’ long-term plans. Also, given that Anunoby’s agent is the son of Knicks president Leon Rose – deepening the Knicks-CAA relationship – one presumes there is a general understanding of what salary might be appropriate to continue Anunoby’s tenure in New York.
- Quickley is on the final year of his rookie contract that pays $4.2 million and will have a cap hold of $12.5 this offseason as a restricted free agent, which may matter if the Raptors don’t re-sign Siakam. He is likely to start in the backcourt next to Scottie Barnes.
- Barrett is on the first year of a four-year extension that pays a total of $107 million, plus (extremely) unlikely incentives. The 23-year-old Canadian would likely take over Anunoby’s spot as Toronto’s starting small forward; he won’t be the lockdown defender that Anunoby was, but adds more shot creation off the dribble.
- Achiuwa is on the final year of a deal that pays him $4.4 million and will be a restricted free agent if the Knicks make a qualifying offer of $6.3 million.
- Flynn makes $3.9 million, is a free agent after the season, and had fallen out of Toronto’s rotation. He’s unlikely to play much for New York but does offer a third point guard. As with the other players in this deal, Flynn’s contract cannot be aggregated with others in another trade between now and the trade deadline.
- Finally, the Knicks had to waive DaQuan Jeffries to complete the deal.
Toronto is now $1.7 million from the tax line and has an open roster spot. The Raptors could sign another player for the rest of the year and stay just below the tax threshold for the year. One would expect them to sign a 10-day contract next week when those become eligible, and hold off on a rest-of-season contract for anybody until after the trade deadline.
The Knicks will gain a $5.2 million trade exception from this deal (they already have one for $6.8 million from last summer’s Obi Toppin trade with Indiana), while the Raptors will gain a $4.4 million exception for Achiuwa. Exceptions of this size are unlikely to have much value, but you never know.
So why do I like this so much for Toronto? Basically, because I think Quickley is a bit of an undiscovered gem, a player who could potentially produce at an impact-starter level in the right team and – because of his restricted status – is likely to be retained on a favorable deal this offseason. Quickley is just 6-3, 190, he isn’t a pure point guard and he rarely gets all the way to the rim, so he’s not a clean fit everywhere. However, he is here. Playing off of Barnes is the perfect role for him. He’s a 39.5 percent 3-point shooter this year who bombs away at a high rate (11.1 attempts per 100), solving a massive need for the Raps.
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Moreover, Quickley is 24, and he’s good. – a plus defender despite being vulnerable in some size matchups, a heady foul-drawer with a good floater game and a pretty solid on-ball guard for this archetype of player. He’s shot better than 50 percent on 2s this year and last, he’s money from the line and he punches above his weight on the glass. Anunoby might be the “name,” but Quickley scores six more points per 100 possessions, gets them more efficiently, and even nearly matches Anunoby on the boards.
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Hollinger: Raptors-Knicks deal favors Toronto, but it made too much sense for either side to pass up
Additionally, the Raptors walked away from this with another nice asset in the Detroit second-rounder, which is almost certain to be either the 31st or 32nd pick in the 2024 draft. Cynics will point out that this draft isn’t seen as very good, and that the last two times the Raps picked in this neighborhood, they ended up with Flynn and Christian Koloko. But at the very least, the Raps got a free shot at landing an inexpensive role player.
Contractually, Quickley’s deal offers some insurance against Siakam fleeing in the offseason, because Quickley’s low cap hold can allow the Raptors to backfill via cap space now. (The most interesting lingering question from this trade: Is free-agent-to-be Siakam available now? Or is it the opposite case and he’s about to sign an extension?)
More probably, the fact that Quickley’s next contract is likely to be on more reasonable terms than Anunoby’s will make the rest of Toronto’s roster construction question easier to answer. The team now projects to have plenty of maneuverability below the 2024-25 tax line, for instance, even if Quickley and Siakam both re-sign.
The cost, to an extent, was taking on Barrett’s deal. He can score and might be reimagined in Toronto as a sixth man for that purpose, but his shaky shooting limits spacing and, in year five, his statistical output has hardly budged across every category since his second season. His deal isn’t terrible and his age still offers the possibility of redemption, but with four years to run, it could fairly be considered to have more negative equity than positive at this point. Basically, he’s an midlevel exception-caliber player making double the MLE.
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Losing Achiuwa hurts Toronto in the short term, leaving the Raps a body short in the frontcourt. Should anything happen to Jakob Poeltl, that could be a real problem. Although statistically he hasn’t graded out much above replacement level, Achiuwa teased at the ability to do more throughout his Toronto tenure. This season, in particular, he seemed to ditch some of the tunnel vision and discovered that he can pass to the other four players on the floor, and his shooting stroke has always looked better than his 31.4 percent career mark from 3 would imply. As noted above, his ability to play either center or forward solves the Knicks’ most nagging short-term depth issue.
While the long-term implications of this deal are the most important, in the short term, this deal likely will help right the ship for each team in the second half of the season. Toronto has enough talent to get into the Play-In, at the very least, and with a right-sized lineup, it should have an easier time gliding past the East’s limp competition for the 10th seed. New York, meanwhile, is in a dogfight for spots in the top six with Orlando, Miami and Cleveland. This deal makes it easier to outlast at least one of the others and avoid the Play-In, while mostly keeping the Knicks’ powder dry to pursue their elusive blockbuster.
Again, I like this better for Toronto because I like Quickley better than Anunoby and the margins mostly favor the Raptors, but it’s not like New York should sue over this. It just made heaps of sense for both franchises.
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(Photo: Mike Stobe / Getty Images)
