Can The New York Knicks Unlock The Ceiling Of Quentin Grimes?

One of the most repeated taglines that has and will continue to be associated with the New York Knicks is depth. They have it, and while it is valuable in so many different respects, it has a dark side to it.

On its face, categorizing depth as a negative seems to be counter intuitive. The NBA continues to prioritize load management and retaining capable backups for injuries is always vital to a team’s success. The problem is when you have a healthy roster some of the players are liable to be left on the bench, or get squeezed out of playing time.

The ceiling of the Knicks will be reached if they are able to coax everything they can out of their young core. Of that core, Grimes has shown a game that screams safe. There is a comfortability for fans to evaluate what he’s done in his short time on the court, which is to provide relentless defensive effort and to drain 3-pointers. That positional archetype is not only tantalizing, but it’s craved by teams around the league.

The bigger question for Grimes is whether there is more to his game that should be explored.

Summer league is the perfect chance to give players the opportunity to try new things. Statistically there are several examples of players putting up numbers while not living up to the hype (looking at you Kevin Knox). It makes it even more important to evaluate the “how” in the manner in which they get that production, or what things they are trying out to determine what is translatable to the NBA court.

Grimes showed moments last season that gave hope that he could be more than just a 3-and-D player. He won off the dribble and was able to finish strongly at the basket a couple of times against the Sacramento Kings in January.

Clearly, the organization has pushed for Grimes to take more chances on the ball during summer league. They did the same for Immanuel Quickley last year to try and suss out his potential. Grimes notably was a highly touted recruit for the Kansas Jayhawks before transferring and changing roles for the Houston Cougars. We saw much more of that recruit on display over the past couple of weeks.

One of the glowing positives has been his finishing at the rim. His strength and willingness to take on contact is a huge positive. His percentages last year when taking those looks were a solid 51% but the issue lied in his shot selection. He took only 22 shots at the rim last year, which was in the bottom 10 percentile for wings. A more aggressive approach would help balance out his game and give him the threat of being able to penetrate the paint on a more consistent basis. Being able to allocate more looks at the rim should force defenders to close out a bit more cautiously on him if he finds himself open at the 3-point arc. That gives him the luxury of being able to take advantage of catch and shoot looks, which he canned at a 41% rate last season.

One of the other options when you put the ball on the floor is to pass to the open man. Grimes made that a priority during his time in the summer league by dishing out four assists per game — a figure that only two other players accomplished while averaging over 20 points per game during the summer league. That number doesn’t jump off the page, but it shows a willingness for him to find the open roll man.

For example, the Portland Trail Blazers absolutely hounded Quentin Grimes throughout the Summer League Championship game on Sunday. Oftentimes they would send two or more defenders at Grimes to force him into tough situations. It’s almost a certainty that it won’t be a situation he’ll find himself in when the regular season rolls around, but it did give him the full experience of what it is like to be “the guy”. He showed off some smart decision making, like when he found Jericho Sims open on the baseline for an easy dunk after a third defender collapsed on him.

Those snippets aren’t going to lead to Grimes becoming an All-Star caliber player next year. The likelihood is low that he’s even able to improve that much from his 14 percent usage rate last year, especially if he’s put into the starting lineup. The point is that those little things that he has worked on can have results that have him taking a step forward. Shooters that can defend are immensely valuable to teams that have superstars on them, but the playoffs value players that can do everything on the court. Adding these different elements to his game helps make him indispensable.

Grimes showed last year that he can succeed, even when a defender is up in his space. Now, he can start to take advantage by taking hard dribbles off of a catch and shoot look when defenders are scrambling to get out to him at the 3-point arc.

The question that is still fair to ask is whether any of this is impressive enough to exclaim that a ceiling is really high enough to mention. But Klay Thompson has paved the way for what a player can look like when they unlock superb shooting, stonewall defense and a penchant to balance it all out with smart pump fakes and drives to the rack.

Expecting Grimes to become this is a fool’s errand, but hoping that the Knicks can craft a plan to help him get there? Well, that all may be dependent on what they do next. Stay tuned.