Quentin Grimes, once a Knicks first-round pick and important puzzle piece, said he woke Monday morning with a little extra juice for that night’s matchup at MSG, a natural feeling for those revenge games.
“I really don’t look at it like, ‘Oh, I got to go off or something,’ ” Grimes said. “But you do get a little extra oomph when you wake up and try to go off against a team that traded you.”
Grimes, who was traded to the Pistons about three weeks ago with Evan Fournier for Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanovic, said he’s already comfortable in his new town, his new digs.
He reunited with former college teammate Marcus Sasser, now a Pistons rookie.
He moved into a spot close to the Detroit downtown arena, which offers more convenience than the setup in New York with a practice facility in Westchester and a home arena in Midtown.
“It would take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes to get to the game,” Grimes recalled. “If you hit any traffic or anything, it’ll take you an hour [and] 20 [minutes]. They send out that mass text like, ‘Everybody leave early because of traffic.’ ”
Compared to Fournier’s prolonged departure from New York, Grimes’ falling out was a little sudden.
A year ago, he was the 3-and-D starting shooting guard averaging about 30 minutes on a playoff-bound roster.
The Knicks had made it a priority to keep Grimes in their failed 2022 trade negotiations for Donovan Mitchell, lending further credence to the idea that he was a lasting piece.
But then the Knicks signed Donte DiVincenzo, and the roster was fully healthy for the opening months this season with three ball-dominant starters (Jalen Brunson, RJ Barrett, Julius Randle) alongside Grimes.
Frustration bubbled over pretty quickly, with Grimes airing his grievances to the media in early December.
“It wasn’t like how it was last year,” Grimes added Monday. “But sometimes it goes like that. We had RJ the whole season, Julius. Everybody was pretty much healthy so those guys need the ball for the majority of the game, so it’s hard to get shots and stuff like that when you’re playing with three guys who are pretty ball-dominant. So that’s just kind of how it went this year.”
The Knicks dealt Barrett and Immanuel Quickley in late December — theoretically freeing up more opportunities for Grimes — but the situation was never repaired.
Grimes agreed that his connection with Tom Thibodeau, once a perfect match, wasn’t the same as last season.
Grimes understood his fate days before the news leaked.
“I knew it was going to happen. I didn’t know it would be Detroit. It was a few teams,” Grimes said. “But I knew it was going to happen, for sure.”
Grimes, who becomes eligible for a contract extension in the summer, played 26 minutes off the bench in his Pistons debut Saturday — a close loss to the Pacers — while scoring five points on 2 of 8 shooting.
He missed the previous eight games with a knee sprain sustained while with the Knicks.
For New York, the trade was mostly about generating offense and adding bench depth with Bogdanovic and Burks.
But Grimes is a better defender than both those players, and the Knicks allowed an average of 113.7 points in the six games right after the trade (compared to their season average of 109.8 points allowed).
The Pistons, enduring a miserable first season under coach Monty Williams, entered Monday with the league’s worst record.
“Just try to come in and bring in some of the habits I’ve learned under Thibs, come in and try to bring a winning culture, try to get it restored and try to uplift everything,” Grimes said. “Only place you can go right now is up with this team.”
