Jrue Holiday Comments on Immanuel Quickley's Defensive Development
Immanuel Quickley knows he’s special offensively.
He has all the tools you could possibly want in a modern NBA guard. Need a pull-up three? He’s hitting those at a nearly 40% clip. Want a guy with an impressive floater package? He’s shooting 59% on floater this year too. Even his playmaking chops have been on full display since he joined the Toronto Raptors earlier this month.
But what will make Quickley a truly special player one day is what he can do on the defensive end. The 6-foot-2 combo guard may be a tad undersized, but his 6-foot-8 wingspan and high basketball IQ have allowed him to hold his own on both ends of the court.
It’s helped that Quickley knows who to go to for defensive advice too. If you want to be the best, why not learn from the best?
“He was one person that hit me up about how I play defense, what I like to do, what I see,” Celtics All-Defense guard Jrue Holiday told AllRaptors Monday night. “I've talked to Quick quite a bit about that.”
So how exactly does one go about becoming a Jrue Holiday level defender?
“I duno,” Holiday said who acknowledged his relentless effort helps on the defensive end.
“He needs to eat a lot,” Raptors coach Darko Rajaković joked. “He needs to lift a lot. And he needs to continue to listen to coaches and then to study film.
“I want to be Porzingis but I’ve got to grow.”
OK, so it’s not exactly easy.
Quickley isn’t broad enough to be physical like Holiday who has two inches and 15 pounds on his Raptors counterpart, at least according to NBA.com. But still, Quickley’s defense has been impressive and scrappy in his limited time with the Raptors. He’s not often going to smother his man with one-on-one defense, but he’s quick in rotation and flies around creating chaos in the defense end.
“I think it’s really good,” Holiday said of Quickley’s defense. “Especially picking up full court, trying to be aggressive, trying to be a hound, and just nag people. It’s really great. Obviously, I know sometimes people see him as smaller, but I think with athleticism that they have over there it really helps them out.”
And when he does get beat, it helps that he can get those points right back on the other end too.
“The difference with him is offensively his game is so next level where he gets to the paint, he has a floater, he's a threat from outside, from, what, 30 feet? So I really like Quick’s game,” Holiday added.
In Boston, Holiday is one of multiple go-to stoppers for a Celtics team that ranks second in the NBA in defense. They’ve been elite on that end thanks in no small part to the addition of Holiday.
Toronto isn’t there yet, nor is this team particularly close. But Quickley is more than just an offense-first scorer. He may never reach Holiday’s level of defense, but just getting close would go a long way to helping the Raptors get that defensive identity they once prided themselves on.
