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HOUSTON — Sitting courtside at the Toyota Center following the 76ers’ Wednesday practice, Quentin Grimes reminisced about his “special” night the last time he played inside this building.
The combo guard was not meticulously keeping track of each point he scored as his total climbed to a career-high 46 last March. But he was living out the sports cliché of “being locked in and in that zone.”
“You’re not even worried about what’s going on,” Grimes recalled to The Inquirer. “You feel like you can’t miss.”
It was poetic that his career performance occurred in front of friends and family in his hometown. It also happened in an overtime loss at the Rockets, while the Sixers unleashed Grimes as their top offensive option during their “tank” down the stretch of a woeful 2024-25 season.
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The team circumstances are much different — and preferable — for Grimes’ latest visit to Houston more than a year later. The Sixers (43-36) are in the thick of the race for Eastern Conference postseason seeding, toggling between a guaranteed first-round series and needing to advance there through the play-in tournament. Thursday’s matchup against the Rockets, who are fighting for positioning in the West, will be crucial in determining the Sixers’ fate.
Where does Grimes’ ideal role land in all of this? His responsibilities have fluctuated throughout the season because of teammates’ injuries and some personal inconsistencies. On Wednesday, he evaluated his performance this season as “solid,” believing he “maximized” all the different opportunities while averaging 13.7 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 3.3 assists in 72 games.
And even when the Sixers are at full strength, as they hope to be for the rest of the way, Grimes views his fit as the “same as the whole season.”
“Be in attack mode. Be a good on-ball defender. Make plays for myself and teammates,” Grimes said last week. “The whole year has asked for me to do different things. But I feel like, when the whole team’s healthy, my natural self is still playing my same game I’ve been playing the whole year.”
Still, Grimes acknowledged he is trying to get back in the flow of the Sixers offense with Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, Paul George, and Kelly Oubre Jr. all reintegrating during the last two weeks. The 25-year-old Grimes is coming off consecutive quiet outings, going scoreless on 0-for-4 shooting in Saturday’s home loss to the Detroit Pistons and totaling five points on 2-of-7 shooting in Monday’s defeat at the San Antonio Spurs.
Grimes said Wednesday that he hopes to get himself going early against the Rockets. He gets into that “attack mode” mindset by chatting with his father, Marshall, and personal trainer, Ben Perkins, who remind him not to overthink on the court and play with the freedom of summer workouts. That has helped Grimes connect on 57.7% of his two-point attempts — often while relentlessly driving to the rim and drawing fouls — even while shooting a career-low 33.1% from three-point range.
“Everybody that has the ability to get downhill and to vault up and shoot threes and do those kind of things,” coach Nick Nurse recently said when asked recently about Grimes’ personal mantra. “I want them all being super aggressive.”
The coach acknowledges that Grimes’ Sixers tenure has come “right in the middle of all this change, constantly.” Grimes’ go-to scoring capabilities resurfaced when Maxey was sidelined for three weeks last month, including in a season-high 31-point effort in a March 15 victory against the Portland Trail Blazers.
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Additionally, Nurse appreciates that Grimes can play long stretches overlapping the first and second quarters or third and fourth periods to join the closing lineup. That requires Grimes to shift between different lineup combinations and keep track of nuances such as how specific teammates pass the ball or how others prefer to defend.
Grimes relishes being trusted to log such lengthy stints because “nobody wants to step out of a game, and I don’t, either.”
Grimes prepares for that possibility by trying to stay off his feet when he is away from the court. He recognizes a postseason moment might arise such as when Grimes was with the New York Knicks in 2023, and he “really couldn’t even bend my knee” after being inadvertently hit on a late screen. While noticeably hobbling, Grimes still poked a crunch-time steal away from Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler.
“You’ve just got to suck it up,” Grimes said, “and do whatever you can to help your team win.”
Grimes is about to return to the postseason with a Sixers team with the top-end talent and depth he believes can be “scary” when healthy. A critical stop on this stretch run includes this homecoming. By Wednesday afternoon, Grimes had already gotten a workout in at the University of Houston, his alma mater. He planned to hit up his favorite Mexican and Japanese restaurants.
He will come back to Houston again whenever the Sixers’ season ends and he enters unrestricted free agency. In order to delay that offseason trip, Grimes does not need another 46-point outburst inside the Toyota Center.
But he does want to get back to his natural self.
“We’ve got a different team now,” he said. “So just got to go out there and just try to do what I do.”