Bright days seemed ahead when Immanuel Quickley signed one of the richest contracts in Toronto Raptors franchise history. But the team’s starting point guard, who was expected to lead alongside Scottie Barnes this season, instead joins Toronto’s all-stars on the sidelines once again.
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The team announced Tuesday that Quickley has partially torn the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow. It happened in the fourth quarter of Sunday night’s loss in Los Angeles against the Lakers. Quickley will be reevaluated in a week, with his condition updated from there as appropriate. In other words, this might take a while, though the injury at least is not on Quickley’s shooting hand. It happened in only his second game back after missing eight straight following a hard fall suffered in the season opener against Cleveland. He also had a minor thumb injury which forced him to miss training camp and the four pre-season games.
His timing and aggressiveness had understandably seemed off and now Quickley will miss more games, forcing him to pick things up on the fly whenever he can return.
Barnes missed his eighth straight game of his own on Tuesday night when the Raptors played in Milwaukee after fracturing his right orbital bone on Oct. 28. Barnes is at least a week away from playing, with that being a best-case scenario. Toronto is also missing veterans Kelly Olynyk and Bruce Brown, who haven’t played yet this season, along with rookie Ja’Kobe Walter. Injuries were a major issue last year as well, but somehow they’ve hit even harder in the early going this season. Toronto was an NBA-worst 2-9 and winless on the road entering Tuesday’s game.
Quickley was acquired along with RJ Barrett and a second-round pick (Jonathan Mogbo) last December in the blockbuster deal that sent OG Anunoby and Precious Achiuwa to the New York Knicks. After averaging 18.6 points, 6.8 assists and 4.8 rebounds on 39.5% three-point shooting in 38 games after the trade, the restricted free agent agreed to a five-year, $175 million U.S. contract with the Raptors. “We are very high on I.Q. Our point guard of the future,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said at the time.
They remain high on the 25-year-old, but would love to see him get some consistent reps with Barnes and the other Raptors at some point. Barnes, Quickley and Barrett haven’t all been in the lineup since March 1.
MORE THAN A RAPTORS PROBLEM
The injury bug has not been a Raptors-only problem by any stretch. Tom Haberstroh, of Yahoo! Sports had a great analysis of the situation league-wide on Monday. Haberstroh mentioned that in Year 2 of the NBA’s Player Participation Policy, which requires players to reach a games played threshold to qualify for certain awards, that star players are on pace to miss 1,000 games this season, up 24% from last year at this time, Haberstroh said, citing tracking data from Jeff Stott’s of in Street Clothes, that games missed by all players are up 35% year-over-year, with the caveat that last year’s numbers were already up 16% over the previous year. The Participation Policy defines a star player as someone who has made an All-Star or All-NBA team in the last three seasons. There are 49 such players this season (including Barnes) and they’ve already combined to miss 83 games, compared to 67 last season, according to the data from Stotts.
Former MVP award winners, Joel Embiid and Kevin Durant switched places this week with Durant heading to the sidelines and Embiid slated to make his season debut. Big names like Ja Morant, Zion Williamson, Tyrese Maxey, Chet Holmgren were lost in the last week alone. Barnes and Paolo Banchero are former rookie of the year award winners unable to play. The New Orleans Pelicans and Memphis Grizzlies injury reports are almost long reads at this point and the Raptors aren’t far behind.
It’s unclear what’s behind the uptick or if significant decreases in NBA viewership cited by Haberstroh are related to the absences of so many top players.