After losing to the Pacers in Philadelphia on Friday, the Sixers began their six game road trip in Dallas on Sunday. The Sixers got the job done thanks to another excellent performance by shooting guard Quentin Grimes. Grimes scored 28 yesterday. As bad as the season has gone for the Sixers, the Mavs season has gone perhaps even worse after trading superstar Luka Doncic right as he enters his prime to the Lakers in what might go down as the worst trade in professional sports history. Unprompted. I'll never understand that one.
March 2025 feels like a mini 'Grimes era' in Sixers history. The Sixers are dealing with loads of injuries and so Grimes is just making the most of his opportunity in recent weeks. This performance must have felt a little bit more special for Grimes since the Mavs traded Grimes to the City of Brotherly love back on February 4th. Grimes will have an intriguing market in free agency, I hope the Sixers manage to keep him on the roster beyond these final fifteen games of 2025. He's averaging practically 20 points a game through sixteen games as a Sixer and consistently shows good effort on a nightly basis. Grimes is playing the best ball of his career and it's just fun to watch. Literally playing his best ball at the most important time of his life, ya love to see it.
Not every fan was thrilled to see the Sixers win and the whole tanking topic is not just depressing but boring. In fact the Jazz were recently fined $100,000 by the NBA for tank-like activities after sitting out Lauri Markkanen. The Sixers are actually under investigation by the NBA for similar reasons, I guess due to Maxey, George, and Embiid all sitting out.
While I'm not like enraged by it, I definitely ultimately find it very lame that many star players don't play as often these days. I heard that maybe shortening the schedule and lessening the amount of playoff teams could be a beneficial move to limit tanking tactics. Consuming Sixers content as a whole and seeing how everyone wants the team to lose sooooo bad feels tragically backwards and odd.
But yeah, tanking to some degree seems likely to happen for the foreseeable future, in pretty much all sports. I'm sure the Sixers will see plenty of losses over this final month of basketball. In fact, I think it's very likely the Sixers see defeat tonight as they're in Houston to face an excellent Rockets team who are very much fighting for wins. The Rockets are locked in a ridiculously close race for the Western Conference's #2 seed, they're currently tied with the Grizzlies and Nuggets with a 43-25 record. So the Rockets are looking at the Sixers like a hopeful easy win during their stressful race I'm sure.
So really tonight as a Sixers fan it's definitely a win-win for me. It would be hilarious to watch Grimes and the Sixers have another awesome game and somehow beat the Rockets. Beating the Rockets so late in the season could alter NBA history LOL. But if the Sixers lose, well, they ideally would get closer to a better pick.
The weird season continues on in a little over three hours. It will be entertaining, I'm sure.