Toronto’s offseason priorities were to lock up two-thirds of their new young core long-term. First, Masai Ujiri and company agreed to a five-year max contract extension with Scottie Barnes.
Now they have agreed to terms with Immanuel Quickley to keep the guard in Toronto, a five-year, $175 million contract, a story broken by Shams Charania of The Athletic. That’s a slightly higher price tag than many around the league expected Quickley to get, but not the maximum, and it’s not out of line with the market. He will start at an estimated $30.2 million next season and earn an average of $35 million a season through the five years. While that’s steep, it’s not going to be an outrageous contract — about 21% of the salary cap the first year — considering the new television deal kicking in and the salary cap going up 10% a year for a handful of years to come.
Quickley, 25, and RJ Barrett came from New York as part of the OG Anunoby trade as the Raptors re-tooled their roster around Barnes. Quickley averaged 18.6 points and 4.8 rebounds a game after the trade, shooting 39.5% from 3 but struggling a little inside the arc. He was forced into a greater shot creation role than expected when Barnes went down injured for the final 22 games of the season — Quickley thrives off the ball as a secondary (or third) scorer, but when asked to do more primary shot creation he was up and down.
Toronto has bet on the young core of Barnes (age 23), Quickley and Barrett coming together and lifting the team into the postseason. We only saw them together for 10 games last season because of Barnes’ hand injury and the team had a solid +3.8 net rating when all three were on the court. The team’s ideal starting five in that stretch — Barnes, Barrett, Quickley, Gary Trent Jr., and Jakob Poeltl — had a +11.8 rating.
Next up on the summer to-do list will be picking up the option on Bruce Brown’s $23 million, both because they think he will have a bounce-back season and because that’s a valuable trade chip. Then, they will likely sign draft picks Ja’Kobe Walter (19th overall) and Jonathan Mogbo (31st), which will leave them the mid-level exception to use all or part of to bring in some front-court depth.
