Grimes

It's not my goal to demean Quentin Grimes, but rather to look at his performance objectively, comparing his on-court performance to his teammates' performance. I defer to Corpus Jayhawk for actual analysis, but the numbers are so start that even an amateur like me can make the points I feel need to be made.
Grimes is without question the least effective starter I've seen since Bill Self arrived in Lawrence. It's possible he might be the least effective starter I've seen since I left Lawrence in 1974 but I don't have the time to go through all the records to see if that possilibity is actually valid. But the first one is, in my opinion. Objectively, Grimes can't shoot, can't rebound, can't create offense with passing or steals, and isn't even a particularly good FT shooter. If we take an obviously challenged offensive player like Marcus Garrett, Garrett's numbers don't look bad at all. Grimes has a .405 FG % while Garrett's is .402. Garrett's 3 point % is .226 while Grimes shoots 3s at .329, which means that Garrett is MUCH better at 2s than Grimes. Both guys are almost identical in FT%, but Garrett gets fouled a lot more each game. Garrett's assist to turnover ratio is 2.0 (the best on the team) while Grimes is .9. Garrett is a much better rebounder, has more steals, and more blocks. And in an admittedly limited sample, Ogbaji is dramatically more effective in every single category than Grimes, which makes Grimes' appearances on the floor as a starter even more peculiar.
In short, it's bad enough that we have one starter who is a black hole on offense, but at least he's a great defensive player. To have 2 black holes on offense, and with the 2nd one a completely empty suit on defense, rebounding and on defense, makes us essentially a 3 man team 1/2 the time and a 4 man team the other half. I have heard explanations such as 'he's got real talent but he lacks confidence," which makes no sense to me since he appears to lack even superior athleticism. He's slow, stiff and lacks lateral quickness, all of which are part of the attributes normally possessed by McDonald's All Americans. What does he bring to our team and why is he starting?

I can't argue with any of that. The ONLY explanation that makes ANY sense to me is that Self has seen something that he thinks will eventually appear in games. All reports were that he was great in the summer. Maybe he's a monster in practice too. I'd compare it to when your car ONLY makes that weird noise when it's at least a mile away from a mechanic. You keep taking it to the shop and the mechanic keeps giving you that look like you're crazy.

At this point I'd be starting Garrett and Agbaji over Vick and/or Grimes, and I'd also start McCormack. Dotson can be more effective if he keeps driving and we need his speed and quick hands. Garrett is much less of a liability now that he's driving. Agbaji is playing well and appears to **gasp** play with energy and enthusiasm. McCormack can, I believe, create opportunities for Lawson by taking the other team's biggest rim protector off of Lawson and allowing Lawson to play his "finesse" game.

Senex, great assessment but I would change one thing and it is a big thing. I would never say Garrett is bad at offense (although I may inadvertently said that but did not mean it). Garrett is bad, no pathetic at jump shooting. You could broaden it to say he is bad at shooting but it is really jump shooting. But Garrett is by no means bad on offense. He is just not a shooter. Aaron Miles wasn't a particularly good shooter but he was excellent at offense. Cedric Hunter wasn't a particularly gifted shooter but he was good at offense. You get my point. Offense is way more than just shooting. I just posted my response to NotO's "What would you do if you were Self" post and my basic premise is that we do not have the players to play a 4 guard lineup. In a 4 guard lineup you need at least 3 reasonably effective shooters. Garrett is a big black spot on that. If you have a 4 guard lineup including Garrett, that means the three other guards better be great outside shooters and we do not have that or even close. As compared to Garrett, Vick is a good (sometimes great) shooter but mediocre (sometimes bad) at offense. To your point on Grimes, I concur. He does little well right now. I can't really conjecture on the "whys" of Grimes, I don;t know the young man. So I would not proffer a solution to a problem I don;t understand. I would just sit him simply because he is ineffective.

I share your thoughts about Grimes. His tentative play does not bother me as much as what I perceive (and you mentioned) to be his apparent lack of athleticism and quickness, lateral or otherwise. The only thing that gives me pause about his future is that I thought many of the same things early last year about Newman. As everyone here well recalls, Self had boasted of him as an All-Big 12 performer before the season. He absolutely was that and more at the end of the year, but for a long time I didn't see any indication of that at all. Something clicked, and all of a sudden, he was magnificent. Perhaps Self believes the same thing can happen here. I don't know. But no, the way he is playing right now, Grimes does not deserve to start. .

While we are all piling on Grimes I will concur that he is not playing like a starter on a winning team. I do not know if his issue is confidence or what but he has not been effective. As I said in another post he plays small. He is 6' 5” and plays like a 5' 9” guy. IMHO it is a lack of emotion in his game. Emotion does not need to be demonstrative but it ignites effort. It looks to me like he is thinking too much and needs to get past that. Which is real easy to say but not easy to do. I saw an article talking about him watching a player and going out and trying to perfect that move. To steal a reference from another thread he needs to watch video of Dennis Rodman and try to emulate those moves. The thing to remember is as the 2 with 2 bigs in the game you probably have him releasing to stretch the floor. Learning to play with 1 big and when to rebound and when to release is not easy.

I won't add to the Grimes discussion, as everything has been said above. What I will say is that this is not a Malik Newman situation where we're hoping Grimes finds the switch like Newman did.

Newman was a prima dona ball hog in every sense of the One and Done culture world. He was touted as a top NBA draft pick, and then bombed at Miss St. He came to KU and was ineffective because he refused to buy into the Self KU team first system. His failures were going solo in a system not designed for that.

Ultimately, at season's end, he was allowed to play the solo game, and score at will, which he did. He still wasn't the NBA player as touted, but he was allowed to be selfish, and it worked.

Grimes shows no OAD attitude, no selfishness, and no skillset that is being hampered by the KU team system. He's showing no skillset at all as far as I can tell. I don't see a tiger like Malik just trying to find a path to unleash his skills. Who knows at this point what he will become.

Mostly, I think Self is trying to avoid a total bust One and Done player transferring from KU and making recruiting even harder than it has become with everything else going on.