One of the biggest fleeces of the 2024 offseason (that no one seems to be talking about) is the trade that made Quentin Grimes a member of the Dallas Mavericks.

For just a salary dump (in the form of Tim Hardaway Jr.), a 2025 second round pick, and two 2028 second round picks, the Mavericks landed one of the best young (24) role players in the association.

But what makes Grimes so tantalizing? How did his trade value get so low? And why will things be different next year?

Modern-Day Three-and-D Stud

Once you have your stars, the next phase of team building is to flank them with two-way wings/forwards who can space the floor and wear multiple hats on defense.

In 2022-23, Grimes hit 38.6% (74th) of the 7.1 threes per 75 possessions (81st) that he attempted (per Dunks & Threes). This wasn’t just some one-hit wonder, either. In 2021-22, Grimes hit 38.1% of his threes. And in 2020-21 (his junior season at Houston), he shot 40.3% from downtown.

As for his defense, a deep dive into his prowess and versatility on that end of the court is outside of the scope of this article (and frankly, unnecessary for the argument we’re trying to make)*. For now, we can lean on Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus (DEF EPM) — Dunks & Threes’ one-number defensive metric — which does, in my opinion, the best job of summarizing a player’s ability on that end of the court. In that measure, Grimes placed in the 79th percentile.

[*Sidebar #1: One thing I will say about Grimes’ defensive game is that he offers solid positional rim protection (65th percentile in block rate among wings in 2022-23, per Cleaning the Glass). Having rim protection at multiple positions was a big reason for Dallas’ defensive success last season.]

Notice how the heading of this section is “Modern-Day Three-and-D Stud.” In today’s game, it isn’t enough for a role player to just be able to shoot threes and defend. They also need to be able to put the ball on the deck and make teams pay for hard closeouts. Grimes is darn near a black belt in this regard, placing in the 84th percentile in true shooting on drives (per Thinking Basketball).

It is so hard, and so important, to winning big in the playoffs to be able to find someone who is a positive on both ends of the court. And that’s exactly what you get with Grimes, along with his strong DEF EPM, he also placed in the 78th percentile in OFF EPM.

During the 2022-23 Playoffs, head coach Tom Thibodeau realized that Grimes was one of the few players that he could lean on to not kill the team on either end of the court. So, as Thibodeau tends to do, he rode Grimes hard — playing him 40.5 minutes per game in their final three games.*

[*Sidebar #2: Grimes had a +/- of +2.7 in that span despite the Knicks losing two of those three games.]

What Went Wrong?

If Grimes is so special, why did the Detroit Pistons trade him away for so little? We just saw the New York Knicks (Grimes’ former employer) fork over a boatload of assets to land OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges. You would think Grimes would command at least one first round pick. So, why didn’t he?

Since the NFL is back and I’m on a major football kick, I’m going to use a fantasy analogy. What happened here is a classic case of a sell-low (something that will probably be happening with a lot of Mark Andrews owners this week).

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a ‘sell-low’ is what happens when a player’s recent performance is underwhelming, causing that player’s owner (or, in this case, the NBA team) to panic and flip them for a price that is below their market value.

In Grimes’ case, 2023-24 didn’t go as well as 2022-23 (hence, me not citing any of his statistics from last season). But there is some context that needs to be added to that.

Grimes started off 2023-24 slow while also dealing with a wrist injury. Unfortunately for him, that occurred at the same time that Donte DiVincenzo was lighting the world on fire, leading to a decrease in Grimes’ role. Then, once the Knicks traded for Anunoby, Grimes’ skillset became a redundancy. So, the team traded him away for players (Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks) who addressed more pressing needs (bench scoring). But before that, Grimes suffered a knee injury that would ail him during his entire stint with the Pistons (leading to him only playing six games for them).

If Grimes does get back on track next year, it will be a huge buy-low for the Mavericks. According to Spotrac, Grimes is set to make 4.3 million dollars. But if he plays the way he did in 2022-23, Grimes will be worth roughly 21 million dollars in 2024-25 (based on my formula for calculating production value).

Why Next Year Will Be Different?

This is the million dollar question when it comes to Grimes. What makes me think that he’ll look more like his 2022-23 self than the person we saw in 2023-24?

First off, he’ll be entering next season fully healthy. As Grimes told the media during his introductory press conference, “I’ve been 100%. I’ve been feeling great, working out every day.”

Second, the data tells us that he is more similar of a player to his 2022-23 campaign than his 2023-24 one. Take his 3-point shooting, for instance. Last year, he shot 33.9% from that region — 4.2% below his average from 2022-23. But remember all those other seasons we cited earlier where he was a good 3-point shooter? That’s three good seasons compared to one bad one. It seems more likely that he’s an above-average shooter than a below-average one.

And lastly, the Mavericks don’t need him to be on his A-game every night. The cool thing about the Mavericks’ roster construction is that they have four guys who fit in the two-way wing/forward archetype (Grimes, Klay Thompson, Naji Marshall, and P.J. Washington). And since Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, and one of their centers will almost always be in their closing lineups, they only really need two of those four guys to be playing well on any given night. That’s less stress on Grimes, and less stress means a higher chance of success.

Time is a strange thing because it can make us forget what should be so simple. Grimes is a young and blossoming role player in this league, and next season, the basketball world will be reminded of that.