DALLAS — After a difficult ending to his Knicks career, Quentin Grimes could’ve claimed revenge motivated him Wednesday night but instead credited Tom Thibodeau for the performance.
“Credit to Thibs,” said Grimes after he helped the Mavericks lock down the Knicks in a 129-114 victory. “He gave me a lot of those hard assignments early in my career and I feel like I was able to get a good understanding of how to guard All-Stars, superstars, and it gets me going.”
Grimes was traded by the Knicks to the Pistons in February, which followed complaints about his role, a desire for a relocation and souring from both sides over the circumstances.
Grimes was rerouted from Detroit to the Mavericks in a separate exchange over the summer.
He started this campaign with disappointment, unable to get a contract extension and playing sparingly on a team with title aspirations.
But Grimes, a restricted free agent in 2025, picked up a bigger role in the past few weeks and started Wednesday in the backcourt with Kyrie Irving because Luka Doncic was again sidelined with a wrist strain.
“[Mavericks coach] J-Kidd was trying to figure out lineups and stuff like that,” Grimes said. “I knew it was going to work itself out. It’s a long, long season. So just go in there, making my impact felt, kind of like it was in New York.”
The Texas native, who attended the University of Houston, is also happy to be close to home and not having to make the infamous commute from the Knicks practice facility in Tarrytown to MSG.
“It doesn’t take me 45-50 minutes to get to the arena anymore, I’m good,” Grimes laughed.
Grimes faced a team Wednesday that was barely recognizable from when he joined the Knicks.
Only Miles McBride and Jericho Sims, both drafted with Grimes in 2021, remain on the active roster.
With all the moves, he found one particularly surprising.
“The biggest thing was Donte [DiVincenzo],” Grimes said. “Just watching him last year and the whole time in the playoffs, I thought Donte was going to be a guy who was going to be a New York lifer for sure.
“But that’s the business of the NBA. Everybody has to do what’s right for the organization and I feel like that was one that really surprised me in the offseason, for sure.”
OG Anunoby went from hero to dud, following up his career-best 40 points on Monday in Denver with eight measly points in Dallas.
“It’s part of the game,” Thibodeau said. “So everything went in for him in Denver and tonight it didn’t.”