Knicks Rookie Quentin Grimes Can’t Stop Scrolling, Either

The Knicks acquired Grimes in a draft-night deal in 2021, about nine months after his dolphin video introduced an ever-expanding TikTok audience to his offbeat, playful personality. That charisma, as well as his penchant for the irreverent, has helped him amass more than 100,000 followers on the increasingly influential social media app, a count that trails only Josh Giddey (515,000) and Jalen Green (326,000) among the 2021 N.B.A. draft class. As a league, the N.B.A. has been quick to embrace TikTok, and its official account has nearly double the followers of the most popular sports league in the country, the N.F.L. As Grimes’s career progresses in a major market like New York, he’ll be poised to profit from his growing following. But for now, he’s more in it for the LOLs.

“I save the dunks for the people who come to the Garden,” he said. “On TikTok, I’m just trying to make people smile.”

Grimes took a circuitous path to playing for the Knicks. A Texas native, he was a consensus 5-star recruit in the Class of 2018 and joined Kansas as a presumed one-and-done player. But after a disappointing freshman year, he transferred to Houston to be closer to home. As a sophomore, he helped Houston win its second-straight conference championship and climb into The Associated Press Top 25 with a 23-8 record. Twelve days after the N.C.A.A. announced it was canceling the 2020 men’s basketball tournament because of the coronavirus pandemic, Grimes started his TikTok account. His first post was captioned: “Boreddddddd!”

As a junior, Grimes guided Houston to its first Final Four since the Phi Slama Jama teams of the early 1980s. That April, he declared for the draft but was projected as a second-round pick until a standout performance at the draft combine. In July, the Los Angeles Clippers selected him with the No. 25 pick on behalf of the Knicks, who had received the draft slot in a trade. That night, he posted a TikTok with the caption: “NEW YORK WHAT’S GOOOOD!” It received almost 500,000 views and nearly 1,500 comments.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/sports/basketball/knicks-quentin-grimes-tiktok.html