NBA Draft Prospect Watch: Stock up, stock down

Stock Down: Quentin Grimes, Kansas

The results for Grimes so far have been pretty strong: 12.3 points, 2.0 rebounds, and 5.7 assists per game with a blistering 56.3 percent from 3 on 16 attempts so far. However, outside of that shooting, Grimes has been a bit of a disappointment, because the process for getting those results has been pretty poor. Billed as an athletic combo guard who can run the point guard spot and defend on the wing, Grimes has not looked particularly stunning from an NBA perspective.

Most problematic to date has been Grimes’s defense. While he has all of the tools to be a strong on-ball defender at the college level, his off-ball defense has been problematic. He has been a prolific ball-watcher on the perimeter and struggles to react to plays as they develop. Michigan State back-cut him to death in the opener, and that’s going to happen to him in the NBA as well if he keeps making decisions like this.

Offensively, the athletic dominance he showed in high school isn’t translating at the rim so far, where he’s converting just a third of his chances, per Hoop-Math. He has struggled to get an edge on perimeter defenders off the bounce, and he hasn’t done much to dislodge defenders on drives so far.

Grimes’s shooting has been solid so far, but there’s very little chance he continues to hit over 55 percent from 3 for the season. That’s problematic because the other aspects of his game aren’t really coming together at this point, especially on the defensive end. I was a little lower on Grimes to start the season than most people, and so far, he’s justified that on the floor.