Quentin Grimes’ mostly quiet first career playoff series took an ominous turn in Game 3.
The starting shooting guard and defensive stopper departed the game just before halftime Friday night with what the Knicks said was a contused right shoulder.
The Knicks added Grimes was questionable to return to the game, and he did not play in the second half.
Head coach Tom Thibodeau offered no update after the Knicks’ 99-79 win.
The second-year guard finished the game with two points on 1-for-5 shooting in 13 minutes.
Grimes has totaled just 11 points in the first three games of the series, missing nine of 11 field-goal attempts and eight of nine from 3-point range.
The chants started as the Knicks pulled away in the fourth quarter, the crowd at MSG wanting to see little-used fan favorite Derrick Rose on the court.
The 34-year-old former league MVP had played just two minutes since Dec. 31, but Thibodeau inserted Rose with 2:30 remaining in the fourth quarter to thunderous applause.
“They’re gonna cheer for him every time. Derrick Rose, that’s a legend,” RJ Barrett said. “Just to be on the team with him, it’s surreal.”
Immanuel Quickley said he will use his runner-up finish to Celtics guard Malcolm Brogdon in voting for the Sixth Man of the Year Award as motivation. Brogdon received 60 first-place votes among 100 voters to 34 for Quickley.
“No doubt, when I was in my first year in the league, when I didn’t make that first-team rookie, that was something that fueled me,” Quickley said. “So you always look for stuff to continue to fuel you and continue to help you get better. So that’ll be one thing that I’ll always remember for the rest of my career.”
Quickley, who scored 11 points off the bench in the win, started 21 times in 81 appearances this season, averaging 22.6 points per game as a starter, compared to Brogdon, who made all 67 of his appearances off the bench for Boston.
“There’s been a lot of, there’s been more players that have started a lot more games than me,” Quickley added. “It’s something that I wanted to win, but at the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world.”
Lakers forward Lamar Odom started 35 games when he won the Sixth Man award in 2010-11 and Spurs guard Manu Ginobli made 23 starts when he won it in 2007-08.
More recently, Clippers guard Lou Williams made 19 starts in 2017-18.
Third-string center Jericho Sims, who didn’t appear in either of the first two games of the series, was unavailable because of a sore right shoulder.
Thibodeau said the injury “has been lingering.”
Hero
The sellout crowd of 19,182. It started rocking before tip-off and never stopped. The Cavaliers looked shell-shocked for most of this one-sided Knicks’ victory, unable to deal with the Garden’s volume. It was deafening, chants of “M-V-P” for multiple Knicks players and thunderous “Let’s Go Knicks” roars bouncing off the walls of the electric building. In the first playoff game at maximum capacity in a decade, Knicks fans answered the ball in a major way.
Zero
The star of Game 2, Darius Garland was nowhere to be found Friday night. He couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean, missing his first six 3-point attempts, hitting only 4 of 21 field-goal attempts and committing three turnovers in a nightmarish performance.
Unsung Hero
The Knicks needed someone to emerge in support of Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle, and RJ Barrett was that player. Snapping out of a shooting slump, he produced the best playoff game of his young career, notching 19 points, eight rebounds and three assists.
Key Stat
87.6 The Cavaliers’ average points in three losses to the Knicks at the Garden this season.
“It’s the Garden. Ain’t nothing like this. This [is] different”
— Mitchell Robinson