With Quentin Grimes out injured, Immanuel Quickley starts for Knicks against Raptors

The Knicks ascension through the standings has coincided with the move into the starting lineup by Quentin Grimes. And Tuesday night the Knicks were left to find out if they could continue that success without him.

Grimes was ruled out shortly before game time with a sprained right ankle suffered in Tuesday’s win over Golden State. That left Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau to search for a replacement and he responded by giving Immanuel Quickley his first start of the season as they faced the Toronto Raptors.

Grimes suffered the injury with 1:02 left in the first half Tuesday when he came down on the foot of Golden State’s Ty Jerome. He left the game after shooting the free throws, but returned to play 13 minutes and 50 seconds in the second half — more than any other player in the onesided win. 

“He kind of came under me,” Grimes said after the game. “I fell down on his ankle. I kind of tweaked it a little bit. I'm all good. It was a lot of pain at first. But I want to stay in the game, so I have to fight through it. It's just an ankle injury, can't control how you come down on somebody's foot. Can't do anything about it, really.”

Grimes spent the morning receiving treatment and warmed up before the game, but on a back-to-back set the team opted to keep him on the bench. 

“I think overall just being a really good two-way player,” Thibodeau said of Grimes. “He complements the starters really well with the shooting and obviously the three-point shooting is a big factor in it. His ability to guard multiple positions at an elite level. It’s hard in this league to guard. As I mentioned, you can guard extremely well and they can still make, but he has a will and determination to do it time after time after time and he’s going to give you two, three, four, five efforts on one play. He never quits. And I love that aspect of him.”

The curious part of the equation for replacing Grimes is that there are two players who have started extensively at that spot — Evan Fournier and Cam Reddish. But they are both buried on the bench. Fournier started the first seven games of the season, arriving as the incumbent after setting a franchise record for three-point field goals made last season. 

Grimes replaced him but reinjured the sore left foot that had sidelined him for much of the preseason and early season. Reddish stepped in to start the next game and was in the starting lineup for eight straight games. 

But neither has played at all as the team has moved from a 10-13 start to 18-13 with an NBA-best eight-game winning streak entering Wednesday’s game. With Grimes in place the Knicks have been the NBA’s highest-rated defensive team in the league over that eight-game stretch. Thibodeau opted to move Quickley up and move on.

“Next man up,” Thibodeau said.

If the Knicks trimmed their rotation down to eight men they would be able to keep the defensive-minded players in play — Quickley, RJ Barrett and Miles McBride. But Grimes still has taken on the toughest assignment every night.

“You see it,” Barrett said. “He’s out there guarding the best ballhandler every night. So he comes with energy, making it tough on the other team. Offensively, he’s shooting the ball really well, and he’s getting to the paint, so he’s doing a lot out there for us.”

"He competes,” Julius Randle said. “I noticed that last year when he got minutes. He doesn't try to get out of character and do something he's not comfortable doing offensively but I know defensively, he's going to compete on the ball, he's going to fight over screens, try to make it tough for the other guy and accept the challenge. You’ve got to love a guy like that.”

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.