The numbers are startling: 33.2 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 4.6 assists over his last five games.
You’d be forgiven if you thought that was from MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and not a seldom-used player moved before the Feb. 6 trade deadline.
Those numbers belong to Quentin Grimes, who has taken Philadelphia by storm since his arrival a month and a half ago. The 6-foot-5 shooting guard has made the absolute most of his increased opportunity with the Sixers, as Joel Embiid, Paul George and standout rookie Jared McCain are out for the remainder of season with injuries.
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Grimes is unquestionably benefiting from the situation as head coach Nick Nurse needs someone — anyone! — to put up numbers on a night-to-night basis.
But calling Grimes simply a decent player on a bad team is doing him a disservice for a multitude of reasons.
Firstly, Grimes hasn’t just had five good games. As a Sixer, the 24-year-old has averaged 23.1 points, including a pair of 40-point performances, and done so on high efficiency.
Grimes is hitting 51% of his total shots, including 39.3% on 3-pointers, and is primarily scoring of his own accord. Only 36.5% of his 2-pointers have been assisted, and he’s created 27.1% of his own made 3-pointers since coming over from Dallas.
Grimes is handling the ball more than ever and is confidently taking pull-up triples, driving to the rim and hitting mid-range pull-ups off the bounce to present a devastatingly good all-around scoring touch.
One might be inclined to wonder if this is just a hot streak, especially as Grimes has been routinely reserved for spot-up duties over the course of his career.
If he were producing at a lower rate, it’d be easier to sweep his efforts aside. But for Grimes to not only maintain a high output, but add substantial efficiency behind that volume — all while breaking out elements of his game we’ve never seen before — then it’s fair to say there might be more to him than we thought.
Grimes isn’t a lock to become a year-to-year 20-point scorer. That shouldn’t be the takeaway from what he’s currently doing. The takeaway should be that his game consists of more than what teams believed it did, and he’s proven himself capable of scaling his hidden talents up to a point where teams can no longer justify solely using him as a spot-up guy.
Essentially, our perception of Grimes now needs to change based on what he’s done in Philadelphia, even if he won’t be able to duplicate this exact production in the future.
How did Grimes get here? Well, it starts with the Dallas Mavericks sending him out for a worse return, making the Grimes trade the uncomfortable sequel to the Lakers’ deal that still has Dallas fans reconsidering their fandom.
According to Yahoo Sports NBA senior analyst Kevin O’Connor, Grimes insinuated he wanted to leave Dallas after the Luka Dončić trade. The Mavericks fulfilled his wish, but perhaps they shouldn’t have.
Grimes was already playing at a high level in the role he’d been given, as the prototypical 3&D wing next to Dončić and Kyrie Irving. Those players aren’t always easy to come by, so even if Dallas had no inkling of his pending explosion, moving off him was always an odd decision, especially when taking back Caleb Martin, who’s older, injured and just, well, worse.
The Mavericks became yet another team to give up on Grimes prematurely, as the Knicks and Pistons also relinquished him in questionable deals.
It seems Grimes, now on his fourth team, finally got the chance to show the league what they’d been missing out on.
Of course, the tale doesn’t end here.
As is always the case with the Sixers, contractual elements stand before them, relentlessly taunting their future salary-cap obligations.
Grimes will become a restricted free agent this summer. And while the league has seen a dramatic decline in players receiving offer sheets, Grimes might be too good for, say, the Brooklyn Nets not to troll the everlasting heck out of the Sixers.
Nets general manager Sean Marks has a history of doing this. Otto Porter ($106 million), and Allen Crabbe ($75 million) being two major examples of where Marks forced the Washington Wizards and Portland Trail Blazers, respectively, to match deals with players those teams felt uncomfortable completing to begin with. Neither Porter nor Crabbe stayed with their teams for the duration of those contracts.
Grimes seems like an obvious candidate to swing on if you’re the Nets.
The Sixers are already in salary-cap hell given the albatross contracts of Embiid and George. If the Nets offered Grimes $100 million over four years, that would put Philadelphia in a tough spot.
Grimes might be worth it, but that wouldn’t be the issue. The fact that the Sixers would have to balance Embiid, George, Tyrese Maxey and Grimes, all on big deals, would be the challenge.
Of course, you could argue the Sixers shouldn’t compound mistakes by letting high-quality talent leave, only to be stuck with talent that’s perpetually unavailable. But since ownership signs the checks, that could become a tough sell.
Whatever happens this summer, one thing seems abundantly clear: Grimes has elevated himself to a place where several teams will have interest, and that is more than what can be said from the situation a year ago.
