Knicks' Immanuel Quickley uses Sixth Man runner-up vote as fuel
New York Knicks guard Immanuel Quickley shoots against Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell (45) during the second half of Game 2 of an NBA basketball first-round playoff series Tuesday, April 18, 2023, in Cleveland. Credit: AP/Ron Schwane
Immanuel Quickley has been taking notes. Leave him off the All-Rookie first team? He remembers. And now that the voters made him second choice for the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award?
“No doubt,” Quickley said after the Knicks’ morning shootaround on Friday. “When I didn’t make that first-team rookie, that was something that fueled me. So you always look for stuff to continue to fuel you and continue to help you get better. So that’ll be one thing that I’ll always remember for the rest of my career.”
Boston’s Malcolm Brogdon won the Sixth Man Award, finishing with 408 points and 60 first-place votes compared to Quickley’s 326 and 34.
Both players averaged 14.9 points per game. What seemed to hurt Quickley’s case was that he started 21 of the 81 games he played in. Brogdon played in only 67 games but came off the bench in all of them. In his 21 starts, Quickley averaged 22.6 points and had five games of at least 30 points.
“They voted for Brogdon, congratulations to him,” Quickley said. “Just locked in for Game 3. I worked hard, so any time you work hard, you want to see your results come, but it’s also important who you become during the process of working hard. You might not always get your results, but who you become trying to get the results is also something that you gain.
“There’s been more players that have started a lot more games than me. So it’s something that I wanted to win . . . Still got a long career hopefully, God willing, ahead of me. And we got an important game tonight, so just gonna try to lock into that.”
Sims sidelined
Jericho Sims was a late addition to the injury list and was ruled out of Friday night’s Game 3 with a sore right shoulder. Sims did not play in the first two games.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
