Quentin Grimes joined the Philadelphia 76ers at the 2024-2025 trade deadline exchange that saw playoff veteran Caleb Martin head to the Dallas Mavericks. The team was sitting at 19-29 on the season and was soon to rule out Joel Embiid for the rest of the year. It was pretty clear to most that the Sixers, while not completely giving up, were going to try and secure a top-six pick in the upcoming draft, given the injuries that were ravaging the roster.
Tyrese Maxey and Paul George were the next to go for the season, with George undergoing treatment for his knee and Maxey missing the rest of the season due to a finger and a back injury. While this likely squashed any remaining dreams of the Sixers making a playoff run, it did give Quentin Grimes the green light to score at a never-before-seen level in his career.
Grimes took this opportunity and ran with it. As a soon-to-be restricted free agent, Grimes knew that how he played for his new team would directly impact his payday this summer, and the opportunity that the Sixers presented him with was absolutely golden. In just his fourth game as a Philadelphia 76er, Grimes scored 30 points in 36 minutes against the Brooklyn Nets in a loss on Feb. 12. This was an incredible achievement for the new Sixer, going 4-9 from beyond the arc despite the loss.
Just a few days later, on March 1, Grimes scored a then-career high 44 points in a shocking victory over the eventual playoff-bound Golden State Warriors. Then, just a few weeks later, Grimes broke that career high again with a 46-point performance in a loss against the eventual second-seed Houston Rockets.
While Grimes likely won’t be a consistent 30-point-per-game scorer come next season, the importance of acquiring a player who can carry the offensive workload for the Sixers when their stars eventually miss time due to injury cannot be understated.
In his first season as a Sixer, the former Houston guard averaged 21.9 points per game in 28 appearances for Philadelphia. He also added 5.2 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1.5 steals a night for the Sixers, while shooting 46.9% from the field and 37.3% from beyond the arc on nearly eight three-pointers attempted a night. As someone who has typically only been viewed as a 3&D guy at the NBA level, this jump was astonishing.
While this year was a disappointment in terms of contending for a championship, Grimes was one of the main bright spots and single-handedly made the end-of-season Sixers an entertaining watch every night. Grimes is a restricted free agent this summer, and one that the Sixers should prioritize retaining come the offseason. With all of that known, Grimes gets an A+ for his time as a Sixer, given both his excellent performance and the circumstances he faced and rose to at the end of the season. It’s going to be interesting to see how he gels with the other stars once they are fully healthy next season.
