March 15, 2026
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images
There is something about Quentin Grimes and the month of March.
PHILADELPHIA – It is not often that a team lists half of its roster on an injury report hours before a game tips off and then earns an impressive victory. But on Sunday night, the Sixers withstood several key absences to earn a 109-103 win over a Portland Trail Blazers team which thrashed them in February.
While a few key Sixers have noteworthy spurts of offensive production – Justin Edwards, VJ Edgecombe, Quentin Grimes, Dominick Barlow and Cam Payne all had their moments – the Sixers also overcame a relatively uninspiring offensive showing against Portland's strong defense.
They did so by turning in their strongest defensive performance in recent memory, a strong showing from wire to wire against an admittedly subpar Portland offense. The Sixers took full advantage of Portland's weaknesses on that end of the floor and used them to help spark efficient offense. Against a team that is at least feisty if not outright good yet, the Sixers were clear underdogs on Sunday, but found a way to capitalize on the factors working in their favor.
Takeaways from a refreshingly encouraging Sixers win:
Before Sunday's game tipped off, Trail Blazers acting head coach Tiago Splitter spoke about the importance of keeping the Sixers out of transition, highlighting Edgecombe and Grimes as particularly dangerous scorers in that setting. And given their significant disadvantage from a size perspective, it made sense for the Sixers to try to play a fast-paced game.
For much of the season, Sixers fans have been frustrated by the team's defensive tendencies. Head coach Nick Nurse is an aggressive defensive coach by nature; he is willing to encourage risk-taking for the sake of forcing turnovers to play in transition and win the possession battle. While the scheme makes sense in theory, it is largely reliant on having very strong rim protection, which the Sixers have sorely lacked for two years. It also requires the sort of discipline the Sixers have lacked for much of the season: some players are just not options to help off of or else they will burn you with an open three.
But on Sunday, it felt like the perfect storm for the Sixers to fly around defensively: Portland entered the game 30th in the NBA in turnovers per game and 29th in three-point percentage. Their rotation only included one high-level three-point shooter, bench wing Vít Krejčí.
With very few reliable sources of half-court shot generation, the Sixers had to get out in transition early and often to have any chance of winning this game. They were willing to play the odds and dare the Trail Blazers to beat them with long-range shooting, despite them doing just that in Portland earlier in the season. The Sixers made an early push thanks to forcing turnovers, but some strong shooting from the Trail Blazers neutralized it to some degree.
In the second quarter, Portland did a much better job taking care of the ball, but the Sixers benefitted from significant three-point shooting regression. Their best defensive frame came in, believe it or not, the third quarter. They created transition scoring chances by forcing turnovers, they let the right players take three-point shots and rode a half-decent offensive frame to a lead.
The Sixers carried a six-point lead into the final frame, where a lineup of Grimes, Payne, MarJon Beauchamp, Trendon Watford and Andre Drummond nearly put the game away on its own. Naturally, no Sixers game can just end in a calm manner, so Portland did make a late push. But the Sixers held on for one of their better wins of the last six weeks, forcing 19 Portland turnovers, scoring 20 fast break points and holding the Blazers to a 17-for-53 line on three-point shots.
If there is any member of the Sixers whose role is actually easier to digest after all of these recent injuries, it is Grimes, whose emergence as a three-level on-ball scorer in March was one of the lone silver linings of last season for the organization. Grimes' frequent scoring binges did not lead to many wins, and he did it while playing with very few teammates capable of shouldering any sort of offensive workload. But that made his efficiency quite remarkable in itself.
Can Grimes think back to what he was doing a year ago and use that experience to inform how he should approach his current situation?
"Yeah, definitely," Grimes said after scoring a game-high 28 points in Saturday's win over Brooklyn. "I feel like what happened last year kind of prepared us for moments like this. We didn't plan on having the majority of our starters out... you've got to be ready for these opportunities and these situations."
While Nurse quickly tabbed Edgecombe as his primary ball-handler in the absence of Tyrese Maxey – he said on Saturday that he would like to see the 20-year-old attempt 20 shots per game without Maxey and Joel Embiid available – it is becoming increasingly clear that from a scoring perspective, Grimes will be at least as important as his rookie backcourt mate.
Grimes, who finished the night with 31 points on 11-for-22 shooting, was the Sixers' best and most consistent option on the offensive end against a stout Portland defense. He got hot down the stretch of the game and helped put it away:
QUENTIN GRIMES.
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) March 16, 2026
he's scored our last 10. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/iscg76vCWY
Grimes has a wider variety of shots he can take and make than Edgecombe. He is more of an inside-out scorer, as Edgecombe's rim finishing numbers remain subpar as he gets adjusted to NBA physicality. It certainly benefits Grimes to have more comfort as a driver; he surprisingly leads the Sixers in poster dunks by a solid margin this season.
Clearly, Grimes will never occupy this sort of role on a consistent basis for a contending team. But the fact that he can on any given night scale his offensive role up to the degree of taking 20 shots or more is quite valuable, particularly for a Sixers team built around high-usage, injury-prone players.
Some additional notes:
• Nurse had 11 players available on Sunday, and he used every single one of them – including Kyle Lowry, who will turn 40 years old next Wednesday.
• It has been a really rough few months for Drummond, but against the hulking Donovan Clingan – a fellow UConn product – Nurse turned to the veteran for the bulk of the game, deeming Adem Bona too small to handle that matchup. Drummond was not incredible, but he was more than serviceable in a prominent role. It was his best game in months.
• Edwards, one day after submitting one of his best games of the season, was even better on Sunday. The one thing missing from him on Saturday was three-point shooting, and he confidently knocked down two early threes against Portland to help the Sixers emerge after a brutal opening few minutes. This is the best stretch of NBA basketball Edwards has played while his team has been attempting to win games, and he made the play of the game down the stretch, stealing a Portland pass in the backcourt and throwing down a hellacious dunk to give the Sixers some valuable breathing room.
Up next: The Sixers will depart for a three-game road trip in the week ahead, which begins with a battle against Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday.
