Knicks Face Key Immanuel Quickley Decision: Sign or Trade?
The New York Knicks are pushing their chips in for what they hope is a team capable of making an NBA Finals run.
The 2023-24 season will mark 25 years since the Knicks last made the NBA Finals. If that drought continues, changes will have to be made, but what can they do with their current salary cap situation?
Taking a "way-too-early" look at the 2024 free agency picture, The Athletic's Danny Leroux tried to make sense of it.
"With Josh Hart’s inevitable extension inked, expect the Knicks to operate over the cap for 2024-25, but their ability to use the non-taxpayer midlevel exception depends on the resolution for free agents Immanuel Quickley (restricted), Isaiah Hartenstein (unrestricted) and Miles McBride (restricted)," Leroux writes. "It looked very unlikely that Knicks president Leon Rose was going to have the non-taxpayer MLE to work with before they traded Toppin, but now it is potentially a choice between the full exception and retaining Hartenstein; the second path likely allows them to also sign someone with the projected $5.22 million taxpayer MLE."
With long-term deals doled out to Hart and Donte DiVincenzo, the wiggle room is running out for the Knicks, especially with Quickley approaching free agency.
Quickley, the runnner-up for the most recent Sixth Man of the Year Award, is a serviceable backup guard who can rise to the occasion when asked, but he wants to be paid like a superstar.
“He is going to want nine figures,” one league executive told Sean Deveney of Heavy Sports. “That’s for four years. I can’t say the Knicks will go that high but they might have to. He is not a guy you want to send to restricted free agency.”
This means that Quickley wants a contract of at least four years, $100 million, the same contract Portland Trail Blazers guard Anfernee Simons signed a year ago. Simons averaged 17.3 points per game in the year leading up to his big extension. Quickley averaged 14.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 3.4 assists last season, all ahead of Simons' career paces.
If Quickley remained in the picture, it would be hard for the Knicks to do much else. But if they parted ways with him, it would allow New York to seek a higher-profile free agent or to use that cap space to acquire a star via trade, like Joel Embiid or Giannis Antetokounmpo.
