It was only one game and Jimmy Butler didn’t play for Golden State, but it was one impressive game against a team that had been playing well for newly-acquired Quentin Grimes.
The weekend was not kind to the Sixers if you’re firmly entrenched in the tank camp as it seems most fans are with just over one month left in the regular season.
It started with the Raptors losing in improbable fashion in Chicago on Friday night allowing a Coby White four-point play to send the game to overtime and once the Bulls won, Philly remained two wins behind Toronto for the fifth-best lottery odds, which comes with a 64% chance of retaining the top-six protected first-rounder, in the lottery standings. Then, the Nets lost a game that they trailed practically the whole way in Detroit. Brooklyn has now lost four straight since beating the Sixers at Wells Fargo Center a little over a week ago. Included in that four-game losing streak for the Nets are losses to lowly the Wizards and a home loss to the sub-.500 Trail Blazers.
Then, the Sixers ended their nine-game losing streak by defeating Golden State 126-119 at home. The win moved the Sixers one-half game behind Brooklyn for the sixth position in the lottery standings and should Philly finish seventh, it would only have a 31.9% chance of keeping its first-rounder this summer. So while the tank slowed down, the way in which Philadelphia ending its skid might offer its fans a ray of hope. In just his ninth game as a Sixer, Quentin Grimes dropped 44 points on a wildly efficient 18-of-24 shooting night that included going 6-of-9 from the three-point line. Oddly enough, despite an outstanding performance from the field, Grimes missed six free throws that would have allowed him to land right on 50. Nevertheless, if the Sixers are going to win games down the stretch, they’ll want them to be fueled by players like Grimes.
Dating back to last month’s trade deadline, Daryl Morey has made a concerted effort on finding younger talent to deploy for the rest of the season and allowing those players to potentially carve out roles for 2025-26. Grimes was probably always going to be a part of next season’s roster once acquired, but if he produces a few more games even close to Saturday’s performance, the role he plays next season will only grow.
After the win, Grimes highlighted his desire to come out and play aggressively, noting he felt he was a bit too passive in Wednesday’s loss in New York against the Knicks. Even if it doesn’t lead to more 44-point performances, this kind of mindset should be encouraged for Grimes and all the younger players on the roster. There is nothing to lose at this point so Grimes and the rest of the roster should play freely and attack defenses with the tenacity that shows they belong for 2025-26 and beyond. Grimes noted there was a point in the second half where he really began to realize his big night.
“I’ve had 20-point halves, but in the third quarter I think I ran off, like, 10 or 11 straight,” Grimes said. “I was like, ‘OK, I’m kind of feeling it tonight for sure.’”
If we dissect that quote a little more, we’ll easily realize how much of a slam-dunk decision it was to trade for Grimes. A 24-year-old that can fill it up to that extent, even if it’s in spurts and not as much for an entire game, is going be coveted by a Sixers team that desperately needed an infusion of young blood. Saturday was a career high for Grimes, but he’s had three games with at least 30 points in his career. One of those was a 30-point outing as a Sixer on Feb. 12 against the Nets. So in nine games with Philly, Grimes has already produced two of the four best scoring performances of his career.
Grimes has certainly been encouraged by Coach Nick Nurse and the rest of the coaching staff to attack and be aggressive since joining the Sixers. It sure seems like there is a concerted effort from the organization’s part to see how good Grimes can be for the remainder of the season.
“Exactly what we told him to do,” Nurse said with a laugh of Grimes’ performance on Saturday night. “He was really good tonight.”
Should Grimes continue to emerge in the season’s final 23 games, fans would certainly be able to feel a little more confident about the franchise’s future with or without the team’s first-round pick this offseason. Remember, Philly re-acquired its own second-round pick as well in the trade that brought in Grimes and sent Caleb Martin to Dallas which is almost certain to be a top-40 selection in the draft. Even if the first-rounder conveys to Oklahoma City, that’s at least something we can pay attention to in this year’s draft. While it sent out a first-rounder and Reggie Jackson in the Jared Butler trade, Philadelphia got four second-round picks from Washington in that deal. Second-round picks are lottery tickets for all intents and purposes, but that’s why it helps to have a lot of them if you’re looking for hidden gems. Grimes doesn’t quite qualify as a hidden gem himself, but being selected 25th overall by a contending Knicks team in 2021 certainly wasn’t going to unearth a lot of games like Saturday night for Grimes.
After being used predominantly as a bench player in his rookie season with the Knicks, Grimes started 66 games as a 22-year-old with New York and saw an uptick in his production in year two. However, as is often the case with young emerging players on contenders, New York traded Grimes in the middle of his third NBA season in an effort to bring in some more established players. Grimes never really found his footing with the cellar-dwelling Pistons and was traded again last offseason to Dallas.
It took Grimes some time to adjust in college as well. The former McDonald’s All-American played sparingly at Kansas as a freshman. He declared for the 2019 NBA Draft, but withdrew after receiving feedback and transferred to Houston where he played for two seasons before being drafted in 2021. His final season at Houston included a slew of accolades, most notably being named Co-Player of the Year in the American Athletic Conference and a third-team All-American.
Grimes may be following a similar career arc in the NBA, which would be a great sign for the Sixers. What’s particularly encouraging is the variety of ways he can score. His offensive versatility was on display against Golden State and Nurse certainly noticed it.
“He comes out aggressive, vaults into a couple early,” Nurse said. “I thought he made enough reads where he pulled up and drove, mixing it up. He had them back on their heels a little bit, not sure which one he was going to do. I thought he did a good job in transition as well. He finished a few throw-ahead early attacks.”
It feels weird that a team that entered the season with championship aspirations could come out of it with multiple unexpected encouraging signs from its depth additions, and still fall so short of a championship. But that might be what 2024-25 is turning into for Philadelphia. It started with a flurry of three -pointers from Jared McCain who was looking like the NBA’s Rookie of the Year before his meniscus injury. For the entire season, Guerschon Yabusele has looked like the move of the offseason for the Sixers. Now, Grimes is already offering some major return on investment having yet to play 10 games in a Sixers uniform.
The Sixers have struggled mightily to develop any sort of consistent rotation this season. But, maybe some of these new additions that have overachieved this season can stick around in the future to form some more continuity. Yabusele was definitely excited about Grimes’ big night as well and also noted the attacking mentality that Grimes was playing with.
“It was an amazing performance,” Yabusele said. “Since he got here, he’s really been showing a lot of great stuff for us, being aggressive on offense. And that’s what we really need at this particular time. Today was just amazing. Every time I was passing him the ball, I was telling him to keep going, keep pushing. He got everybody focused and going the right way. It was really important for us to have this tonight. I think this win was big for us.”
Yabusele sure talks like someone that has been seeking for silver linings amidst a dreadful season for the team. That’s a good sign for the Sixers who will surely want to retain the Frenchman in free agency this summer. For once, Yabusele and the rest of the players that have endured more losing than anyone could have imagined this season had reason to smile.
If anything, Saturday night gave Sixers fans a reason to pay a little bit of attention to the rest of this season. Even if you’re firmly aboard the tank train, this kind of big game for a newly-acquired 24-year-old against a Warriors team that had been playing well is a great sign. At the end of the day, the ping pong balls are going to control the fate of the team’s first-round pick in 2025. But Grimes might have more control over the Sixers’ future than we originally realized.