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Welcome to this week’s Tigers Basketball Insider. Below you’ll find the latest news and analysis from The Daily Memphian’s Parth Upadhyaya, John Martin and Tim Buckley.
Quentin Grimes was once a thorn in Penny Hardaway’s side.
In his two seasons at the University of Houston, the Cougars went 3-1 against coach Hardaway’s Tigers — Grimes himself was a perfect 3-0, since he was out with a hip injury in his team’s February 2020 loss to Memphis. And it was Grimes who dropped 21 points in a 2021 AAC Tournament semifinal win over Memphis that essentially killed any hope the Tigers had of making the NCAA Tournament that season.
Lucky for him, though, Hardaway seems to have a forgiving spirit.
Grimes, now a 6-foot-5 shooting guard with the New York Knicks, is currently training with the former NBA star in Memphis for the third offseason in a row.
Hardaway first began working with Grimes in the summer of 2021, ahead of the 2021 AAC co-Player of the Year being selected No. 25 overall in the NBA Draft. The two — who share an agency — stayed connected since then and have formed a close relationship over the past few years.
“When he first came to me, he wasn’t like this spectacular finisher around the rim, even though he’s very athletic,” Hardaway told pop culture news site Uproxx in April. “So, we worked on some different spins … angling your body for different types of layups, the height of the ball on the glass, whether it’s low, medium or high.”
Grimes averaged 11.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.1 assists this past season for the Knicks after averaging 6.0 points, 2.0 rebounds and 1.0 assist as a rookie in 2021-22. Perhaps the area of his game that made the biggest jump was his ability to score inside the arc, evidenced by the 14.1% increase in his 2-point field goal percentage from Year 1 (50%) to Year 2 (64.1%).
The way Hardaway — one of the best point guards in the NBA in the mid-1990s — sees and thinks about the game has also helped Grimes.
“He puts you in a situation where you’re always thinking,” Grimes told Uproxx. “He’ll give you like six different reads that you have to make. … He has you thinking, ‘Bounce pass, pocket pass, now you’re coming off a down curl, down screen, come off the pick-and-roll, read that guy, finish at the rim, now go shoot,’ the whole time.”
The results of learning from Hardaway have already been evident for the 22-year-old Grimes, who is expected to be a key piece of the future for the Knicks as they look to build off of making the playoffs in two of the past three seasons.
With Hardaway’s mentorship, there’s no reason why Grimes can’t take yet another sizable step forward heading into his third year in the NBA.
But, even though the two are no longer rivals, Grimes won’t soon let Hardaway forget about the success he had against his Tigers not so long ago.
“Oh, he’s a jokester now,” Hardaway told Uproxx. “He’s got some jokes. He’s got a lot of jokes. He’ll hit you with something (and) you’d be like, ‘Oh, OK, you’re gonna be Mr. Funny Guy.’”
More from your Insider:
Those who have known St. John’s transfer David Jones from the time he arrived in the U.S. in 2017 feel he can be a piece that’s just as important as any on next season’s Tigers.
Billy Richmond III — son of former Memphis Tiger Billy Richmond — is one of the fastest-rising basketball prospects in the Class of 2024.
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