Quentin Grimes has attempted 26 three-pointers in nine games for the Los Angeles Lakers. That is 2.9 a night, the lowest rate of his career — below the 4.1 he took as a rookie in New York while playing 17 minutes a game. He is making 23.1 percent of them.
Nine games is nine games, and 6-of-26 from distance is the sample that corrects itself inside a week. The attempts are the part that does not look like variance. Grimes took 5.1 threes a game for the Philadelphia 76ers last season, per Basketball-Reference. Per 36 minutes, he has gone from 6.2 attempts to 4.0.
Three Attempts a Night, Six Straight Nights
The flatness is the strange part. Grimes has attempted exactly three three-pointers in each of his last six games, going 3-of-18 across them. His minutes over that stretch: 19, 38, 26, 26, 23, 25.
That is not a shooter being run off the floor for missing, which was the risk when he had played 78 minutes without a start and his minutes swung from 27 to 31 to 20. It is a wing settled into a fixed, small number of looks.
He Is Fourth in Minutes and Seventh in Three-Point Attempts
Grimes averages 26.1 minutes, fourth on the Lakers behind only Austin Reaves, Luka Dončić and Walker Kessler. He plays more than Matisse Thybulle (24.2) and Jake LaRavia (23.4), both of whom start ahead of him. Los Angeles is 7-2, and Grimes is a plus-30 across the nine games.
But six Lakers attempt more threes per game than he does, and all six attempt more per 36 minutes. Thybulle, who plays two fewer minutes a night, has taken 42 threes to Grimes’ 26 and made 42.9 percent. The spacing the offense needs is being supplied by the players around him.
The Points Have Moved to the Free-Throw Line
Grimes averages 3.3 free-throw attempts, fourth on the roster behind Dončić, Reaves and Kessler, on 22-of-30 shooting. His best night — 23 points in his only start, Oct. 28 at the LA Clippers with Dončić out — came on 0-of-3 from three and 9-of-11 from the line.
That is a useful player. It is also a different player from the one the roster was built around. Rob Pelinka said in October that Grimes, Thybulle and Ziaire Williams were signed for point-of-attack defense, and that half of the description is holding up fine.
The Spacing Bet Lost and the Offense Won Anyway
The premise going into the season was that Grimes’ shooting was the single most load-bearing skill on the roster — that the Dončić engine stalls if defenses can sag off the wing. Nine games in, defenses can sag off the wing, and the engine is averaging 121.8 points a game.
It is holding up because Dončić is shooting 43.1 percent on 13.6 attempts a game, Reaves 42.9 percent, Thybulle 42.9 and LaRavia 58.8. The bet did not pay and it did not need to.
The live question is no longer whether Grimes should start; he effectively does, in every way but the opening tip. It is whether a wing taking four threes per 36 minutes is the best use of the fourth-most minutes on a 7-2 team, and the honest answer nine games in is that the Lakers have not yet been punished for finding out.
Season figures totalled from the ESPN box scores for all nine games through Nov. 4; career and prior-season rates via Basketball-Reference.
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