It's almost time for the Justin Edwards coming out party, folks. Please get your RSVPs to me in the next few months. Everyone's invited. I sent out a Partiful last week.
As a disclaimer, I should say that I am a top one percent Quentin Grimes enjoyer. For essentially his whole career, he was squarely in the category of player that I believed to be way better than the general population. So, imagine my joy when he played like the top-flight scorer in Philadelphia (21.9 PPG in 28 games) that I tried to convince myself he always was. It goes without saying that I believe the Sixers should bring him back on a multi-year deal.
If, for some reason, that doesn't end up happening, it would be some pretty bad front office work from Daryl Morey. But it would also open the door for something the team should do regardless of Grimes' status next year: give a lot of minutes to Justin Edwards, who ended up being a surprise bright spot last year for the injury-riddled Sixers.
Grimes — a shooting guard — and Edwards — a natural small forward — don't really play the same position, so it's not a direct correlation that Grimes potentially not being in the picture would expand Edwards' role. But with Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain, Kyle Lowry and rookie VJ Edgecombe already manning the backcourt, the Sixers would run out plenty of three-guard lineups and Grimes' size at 6-foot-5 could push him into the de facto small forward role.
A bigger role for Justin Edwards would show the Sixers what they have
If Grimes isn't there (which, again, I think he should be) then a lot of those minutes suddenly transfer to Edwards who could become a pretty huge part of the equation for the Sixers, especially with Paul George's status somewhat unclear after his surgery last month. It's a risky proposition, surely, to give a 21 year-old UDFA a major role on a team that wants to compete for a title. But it also might give the Sixers a glimpse of a future star, which Edwards looked like on more than one occasion last year.
Edwards played 44 games in his rookie season, and most of them were pretty low stakes in a lost season for the Sixers. Still, he was awesome for the most part and looked a lot more like the five-star recruit he was a few years ago than the disappointing one-and-done he was at Kentucky more recently. He averaged 10.1 points, shot 36.3 percent from 3-point range and showed a pretty high-level creation ability for an undrafted rookie. Flanked by Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid and other playmakers, he won't be expected to do much off the dribble in 2025-26 which should improve an already pretty solid efficiency (54.6 eFG%, 55.9% TS).
Is Justin Edwards one of the NBA's best-kept secrets?
Again... I want to be clear... bringing back Grimes, who was sensational in his half-season with the Sixers, should be priority No. 1 for Morey and the front office. But if he ends up on a different roster for whatever reason, that blow would be less painful with a Justin Edwards emergence.
There's reason to think that emergence is coming, too, and that reason is Edwards' ability to score at all three levels like the best in the business. About half of his shot attempts were 3s last year — and he was above league-average from distance — but he was perhaps even better in the midrange, shooting 52.5 percent from 10-16 feet. That area comprised only about 10 percent of his shot attempts, though, a number that should increase in 2025-26 when essentially no defensive attention will be paid to him (at least early in the season.) He also got to the rim semi-regularly — both by himself and on cuts, which he's great at — and shot 66.3 percent within three feet, a solid clip for a rookie on a team that didn't have too many 3-point threats with so many stars injured.
Justin Edwards' path to NBA success has been anything but linear, and he's far from a household name heading into year two with the Sixers. But I still see a pretty clear path to success for Edwards with this roster, whether or not the team finally, mercifully brings back Quentin Grimes.