Sixers Star Makes Strong Impression on Teammate After Hot Start…

In an otherwise disappointing season, Quentin Grimes is providing the Philadelphia 76ers a glimmer of hope. The 24-year-old guard has become a key contributor since joining the Sixers at the Feb. 6 trade deadline.

Grimes has suited up for Philadelphia on 25 occasions this season. He’s averaging 22.3 points, 4.4 assists and 4.8 rebounds. He’s shooting 39.5% from 3-point range and 49% from the field.

During a recent news conference, Sixers guard Lonnie Walker IV shared his thoughts on Grimes’s hot start to life with Nick Nurse’s team.

“His consistency, his ability to score and his professionalism,” Walker IV said. “I think he’s doing a lot of things, both on and off the court, that show he’s a professional. He’s treating the game like a pro. He’s approaching the game like a pro. I think his work ethic and his scalability is starting to show on the court more consistently.”

Grimes will hit restricted free agency this summer. The Sixers will likely do whatever they can to retain him. As such, unless Grimes is provided with an outlandish contract offer, it’s fair to expect Philadelphia to match any offer sheet Grimes signs.

Walker, on the other hand, may be forced to navigate free agency for the second time in two years. He has impressed with the Sixers, but Grimes’ emergence likely hinders his chances of earning a deal.

Guerschon Yabusele Also Praises Grimes
Guerschon Yabusele also had some high praise for Grimes following the Sixers’ loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday, April 5.

“He’s really fearless,” Yabusele said. “He’s really giving it out there, he played 100%. Hits tough shots, his ability to create his of Grimes own shot, and be able to score when it’s really contested has been amazing. When you look at tonight (Saturday), he got two or three 3s that got us back in the game, it was just amazing. When he’s in that zone, you feel like there’s nothing you can really do.”

Yabusele has enjoyed a strong season himself. However, like Walker IV, his future is likely away from the Sixers. Nevertheless, the fact that two players have now praised Grimes’s impact shows how important he’s become for Philadelphia and its chances of success.

Sixers Hope to Retain Grimes
According to a March 31 report from Marc Stein, the Sixers will head into the offseason with the desire to keep Grimes around long-term.

“League sources say that Quentin Grimes’ camp did not explicitly request a trade out of Dallas, despite suggestions to the contrary… The fourth-year guard appears to have given his forthcoming foray into a restricted free agency quite a boost regardless with his scoring as a Sixer,” Stein reported. “The Sixers, I’m told, do hope to re-sign Grimes, whose precise market is difficult to forecast (as it always is for RFAs).”

Grimes will undoubtedly entice offers from teams around the NBA. However, the Sixers will likely want to see how Grimes fares when playing next to Tyrese Maxey for a season. Furthermore, the additional scoring punch he offers could be important on a team that boasts injury-prone stars such as Paul George and Joel Embiid.

The Sixers want to keep Grimes. So, now they must do whatever it takes to sign him to a new deal. Unfortunately for Philadelphia, that could mean accepting a slight overpay.

Amen Thompson Breaks The Game.

In the fourth quarter of last Friday’s Thunder-Rockets game, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander executed perhaps the NBA’s single most-executed action and drove to the basket. One aspect of OKC’s double-big lineup that makes defending the group particularly demanding is the unique threat that each of the two bigs presents as a screener; you can see on the following play how Isaiah Hartenstein’s ghost screen forces Amen Thompson out to Gilgeous-Alexander’s outside hip, and how he and Chet Holmgren arcing down to the block keeps either Alperen Sengun or Jabari Smith Jr. from helping. This action forces one player to defend Gilgeous-Alexander’s drive from a disadvantageous position, which has been a death sentence for almost every single defender, all year.

Not Thompson. He stuck with the slithery Thunder guard, kept him from fully turning the corner or baiting a foul, and rejected his midrange jumper.

This single play shows a good deal of what has made Thompson perhaps the single most magnetic player in the NBA this season. You can see the predatory instincts that make him one of the most feared defenders in the league, a nous for seizing the initiative in an exchange and putting the offensive player on their heels. You can see his perfect balance, sproingy leaping ability, and quick feet—rare for any player, unprecedented for someone this tall. Most importantly, you can see his zeal for competing with and humbling the best players in the NBA.

It is scarcely comprehensible that someone this tall can move like that, and when I watch Thompson deftly scramble around thudding screens and casually zip through 15 feet of open space at warp speed, without ever tipping off to one side or the other, I have the sensation that I am paying attention to someone who is ruled by a different set of physical laws. I like watching him and his twin brother, Ausar, play defense more than basically anyone else in the league, because not only are they able to essentially teleport, they know how to read the game at an extremely high level. Modern basketball is a more complicated text than it’s ever been, and they have a superb faculty for language.

For the better part of two months, every basketball conversation I’ve had with someone who roots for a Western Conference team has started with some version of Well, we can make a run, but we have to get Houston or Memphis. Conference standings have been a gnarled thicket since the trade deadline, and all the kicking and gnashing that every team besides the Thunder has had to engage in to stay alive has only knotted things up tighter. The fourth-place Nuggets and eighth-place Grizzlies are separated by a mere half-game, and those two teams are even with the Clippers, Warriors, and Wolves in the loss column. Meanwhile, the Rockets are about to lock up the two seed, having won 15 of their last 17 games. The argument against Houston as a playoff team is that their best offensive players, Sengun and Jalen Green, are young, untested, and relatively solvable. I do have to admit, I find this argument compelling, and the prospect of watching Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet shoot a collective 2-for-15 against imbricated defenses is an annoying one.

The argument for Houston is that their defense, and Thompson specifically, can stand up to any offense. Take their game against the Warriors on Sunday. “Amen wasn’t smiling all day,” Sengun said after the win. “He was locked in. Last two games he’s locking the best players in the world.” It’s true. Days after holding Gilgeous-Alexander to one of his worst games of the season—22 points and two free-throw attempts—he played an even better game against the Warriors, who’d won five straight. Steph Curry, who’d scored 52, 37, and 36 in his most recent three games, had three points. His single made shot came at the end of the first half, on a scramble, with Thompson off the floor. Most shocking was the fact that Curry only took three shots in the whole first half. Thompson erased him.