Quickley led the Knicks in +/- in his first 3 years, and at the time of the trade, he was leading the Knicks again. The trade now complicates such a simple stat, but just to give an idea how unusual it would be to lead his team 4 years in a row, here's the list of guys I have on record:
Baron Davis (across Cha/NO/Clip))
Chris Paul (two separate times, in NO, then Clippers)
Shaquille O'Neal (Lakers)
Steve Nash (Phx)
Dirk Nowitzki (Dal, longest streak at 8)
Tim Duncan (SA)
Nikola Jokic (Den)
Russell Westbrook (OKC)
Jayson Tatum (Bos)
Jason Kidd (NJ)
Patrick Ewing (NY)
LeBron James (two separate times, in Cle, then combined Mia/Cle)
Giannis Antetokounmpo (Mil)
Mookie Blaylock (Atl)
Kyle Korver (Atl, and continued in Cle)
Lou Williams (across Tor/LA/LA)
Now, not all of these players superstar players obviously. What I'd say is that each of these guys tells a story.
Clearly the obvious link here is between Quickley and Lou, because both did this off the bench. I don't think any of us is that excited about a Lou-level player, but at least it gives us a sense of a baseline. While wasn't the best 6th man in history, he might be the archetype for what a "6th man type" player is. and we can see that what he was doing was more than just do pretty good off the bench. His teams tended to do better with their bench lineups than their starters, and that's an accomplishment for the bench lineup.
Of course, Lou being great as the first option against lesser competition didn't translate to being close-to-great against better competition, so 6th man really seemed like the right role for Lou.
Now we look forward to Quickley on a new team and we'll see what happens. I'm not looking to make predictions, but I'm very curious to see if his impact holds up in a new context, particularly if he's allowed to have a starter's role.
I will point out a couple things that make Quickley's situation different from Lou's:
1. Quickley's doing it primarily with defensive impact, which is arguably unique among guards on this list, and I don't think there's serious doubt that his defensive ability scales relative to typical starting defensive guards.
2. Quickley's numbers to this point in his career have been way more impressive than Lou's ever were.
Lou has a career On of +0.2 and On/Off of +0.3.
Interestingly, those were also exactly his numbers in Philly for his first 7 years.
To give a sense of his On/Off at its best, he broke +5.0 in 3 seasons.
Quickley has a career On of +7.3 and On/Off of +10.1.
And he's been north of +5.0 in On/Off every season, as well as in On.
And again focusing on the fact that this is the start of Quickley's career, who in that list above do you think did this in his first 4 years in the league?
Answer in Spoilers:
Spoiler:
So yeah, pretty select company.
It will be interesting to see what happens next. I think Quickley clearly believes he's a starter-level guard and then some so things will likely come to a head, well, quickly one way or the other.
If Quickley falls on his face, it will make Thibs look like a miracle worker.
If Quickley again is only a bench guy, it will still make Thibs look pretty wise.
But what if Quickley ends up being a breakout guy continuing to put up big +/- numbers but in a starters' role, I think there will be a lot of questions asked about why Thibs didn't look to do more with him.
On the other side of things of course is what happens in New York. There things are complicated because Anunoby is a great player. Still, since Quickley came off the bench and Anunoby will surely be a starter, it's worth paying attention to how the Knick bench minutes look now. If they still look great, that will be interesting and a feather in Thibs cap to be sure.
)… but who was available at a reasonable price?