Quentin Grimes was leaning on his kitchen island, snacking on tortilla chips and scrolling by TikTok. It was October 2020, and he was a few months away from beginning his junior season of males’s basketball on the College of Houston. On his TikTok feed, he encountered video after video of individuals imitating dolphins and bumping their our bodies into buddies and strangers. Grimes couldn’t cease laughing, so he determined to leap into the deep finish of the development.
He downloaded the audio monitor from the app, tilted his iPhone towards a toaster oven and hit report. Whereas he was nonetheless chomping on a chip, he held his palms out in entrance of him, arched his again and jumped in sync with the sound of a gun firing. When two extra photographs from the track rang out, he sprang ahead twice extra, laughing as he fell out of the digicam body. The whole video lasted six seconds.
He didn’t suppose something extra of it till he bought into mattress that night time and opened the app once more. Inside a number of hours, the video had been streamed greater than 100,000 instances. By the following day, the quantity was greater than half 1,000,000, and Grimes had gained 20,000 followers. It was simply the ninth video that he’d posted to his account, but it surely satisfied him that the app was the place he might share the enjoyable facet of himself that basketball followers hardly ever bought to see on the court docket.
“As an athlete, you need to be recognized for one thing apart from simply your sport,” Grimes, 21, stated as he swiped on his iPhone 13 throughout an interview at his house in White Plains, N.Y. “You don’t need to simply publish basketball, basketball, basketball. You don’t need that to be your complete life. I believe followers need to see you as an precise particular person.”
The Knicks acquired Grimes in a draft-night deal in 2021, about 9 months after his dolphin video launched an ever-expanding TikTok viewers to his offbeat, playful character. That charisma, in addition to his penchant for the irreverent, has helped him amass greater than 100,000 followers on the more and more influential social media app, a depend that trails solely Josh Giddey (515,000) and Jalen Inexperienced (326,000) among the many 2021 N.B.A. draft class. As a league, the N.B.A. has been quick to embrace TikTok, and its official account has almost double the followers of the preferred sports activities league within the nation, the N.F.L. As Grimes’s profession progresses in a significant market like New York, he’ll be poised to revenue from his rising following. However for now, he’s extra in it for the LOLs.
“I save the dunks for the individuals who come to the Backyard,” he stated. “On TikTok, I’m simply making an attempt to make folks smile.”
Grimes took a circuitous path to enjoying for the Knicks. A Texas native, he was a consensus 5-star recruit within the Class of 2018 and joined Kansas as a presumed one-and-done participant. However after a disappointing freshman yr, he transferred to Houston to be nearer to dwelling. As a sophomore, he helped Houston win its second-straight convention championship and climb into The Related Press High 25 with a 23-8 report. Twelve days after the N.C.A.A. introduced it was canceling the 2020 males’s basketball event due to the coronavirus pandemic, Grimes began his TikTok account. His first publish was captioned: “Boreddddddd!”
As a junior, Grimes guided Houston to its first Last 4 because the Phi Slama Jama groups of the early Eighties. That April, he declared for the draft however was projected as a second-round decide till a standout performance on the draft mix. In July, the Los Angeles Clippers chosen him with the No. 25 decide on behalf of the Knicks, who had acquired the draft slot in a commerce. That night time, he posted a TikTok with the caption: “NEW YORK WHAT’S GOOOOD!” It acquired nearly 500,000 views and almost 1,500 feedback.
When Ben Perkins, Grimes’s former A.A.U. coach and longtime coach, noticed the video making the rounds on social media, he gave Grimes a tough time. “In basketball, I hardly ever praise him. I prefer to push him and prod him,” Perkins stated. “The very first thing I stated once I noticed the video was: ‘Come on, man! Who would need to have a look at you this a lot?’ But it surely’s actually enjoyable. It’s like his alter ego. For those who solely know him as a killer on the court docket, this can be a likelihood to see the foolish facet of him.”
Most of Grimes’s posts contain him dancing, sometimes in a resort room or a rest room. Although he solely posts a number of instances a month, he stated he spends as a lot as three hours a day on the app and sends and receives lots of of memes every day. If he sees a development sufficient instances, he makes an attempt it. If it takes him quite a lot of takes, he abandons it. At Houston, he repeatedly included his teammates in his TikToks, however as an N.B.A. rookie this season, he thought it will be finest to carry off on asking for cameos from his veteran teammates.
Early on within the season, Knicks followers noticed him extra on social media than on the court docket — he didn’t seem in 12 of the crew’s first 16 video games. However between these video games, he was impressing Knicks coaches along with his effort in practices, his dedication to learning his defensive assignments and the power he confirmed even in garbage-time minutes. Grimes bought his first begin in December, when the crew was with out RJ Barrett, Obi Toppin and Alec Burks. He set a franchise rookie record with seven 3-pointers. The jersey from that recreation hangs on a chair in his kitchen, ready to be framed.
“My perspective was: ‘If I solely get on the court docket for the final minute, then it’s my objective to play 110 % in that minute,’” Grimes stated. “In a single minute, you may nonetheless get an enormous cease or an enormous bucket. The coaches pay attention to all that. Even in the event you get in for eight seconds on protection, the way you play is essential. That was my function early. They’d say, ‘Go guard Jimmy Butler,’ and I’d say, ‘OK, I’ll go do this.’”
From Christmas by the All-Star break, he averaged greater than 23 minutes per recreation and notched 5 extra begins. His toughness impressed even his notoriously gruff head coach. “I like Grimes. I like Grimes,” Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau advised reporters after a January observe. “He’s a fierce competitor, can shoot the ball, can guard a number of positions, and he’s solely going to get higher.”
In February, Grimes partially dislocated his proper kneecap when he was making an attempt to get round a display screen within the first quarter of a recreation towards Miami. He couldn’t convey himself to take a look at the kneecap, adrift on the facet of his leg — desirous about it even a month later despatched him right into a shiver — however he breathed an enormous sigh of reduction when he discovered that the damage wouldn’t be career-altering. The one lasting disappointment was that it cost him a chance to play in the identical enviornment on the identical day as his half brother, Tyler Myers, a veteran defenseman for the Vancouver Canucks. He made it again onto the court docket lower than a month later, however he’s taken it sluggish because the Knicks season ends with out a playoff berth.
He’s additionally slowed down his posting throughout his restoration. However that doesn’t imply he’s spending much less time on social media. Each night time, after he’s taken a bathe and turned off all of the lights in his house, he places his telephone in his hand and his head on his pillow. “It’s simply me and the brightness of the display screen, scrolling and scrolling,” he stated. “You get hooked” — he snaps his fingers — “like that! And then you definitely’ve bought to pressure your self to fall asleep although you’re not drained.”
Together with his rookie season nearly behind him, Grimes has large plans for his future in New York — on the court docket and on-line. He stated he desires to do extra movies subsequent season with Barrett and Cam Reddish, whom he has recognized since they had been sophomores in highschool. And, in fact, he hopes that as a wholesome group, they may also help steer the Knicks again to the postseason. “Subsequent yr,” he stated, “persons are actually going to see what we will do.”
