On Monday at Xfinity Mobile Arena, Flyers fans would boo the Vancouver Canucks, like they do with every opposing team.
But one Canuck, defenseman Tyler Myers, had a cheering section to drown out the noise, led by his half brother, 76ers guard Quentin Grimes.
Grimes and Myers are the only pair of brothers to ever play in the NHL and NBA.
Their mother “gets on my dad a lot about who’s got the best genes in the family,” Grimes said jokingly. “She gets the bragging rights on that.”
Myers was born Feb. 1, 1990, 10 years before Grimes was born, in Houston. His father Paul, a former college hockey player, encouraged him to put on skates. Their mother, Tonja Stelly, and later Grimes’ father, Marshall Grimes, both former college basketball players, taught Myers how to play basketball.
“He said he had a pretty good crossover and stuff like that,” Grimes said. “He definitely [has] a little bit of game to him, for sure.”
When Grimes was much younger, he said the two sometimes would try and play one-on-one. “Just messing around, trying to play against the tallest guy I’ve ever seen,” he said. Myers is one of the NHL’s tallest players, standing at 6-foot-8, compared to Grimes, who is 6-4.
The brothers never lived together. Myers left Texas shortly after Grimes was born to live in Calgary with his father, where he grew into a professional hockey player. Grimes stayed behind in Texas, but the two of them would see each other as often as they could during the summer or school breaks.
Myers became a mainstay in the NHL while Grimes established himself as a top basketball prospect. When Grimes was a junior in high school, the two got back in regular touch, with Grimes tapping into Myers’ years of experience as a professional athlete as he was just starting out.
“It’s been growing ever since I got pretty good at basketball,” Grimes said. “My mom was asking him some stuff to help me be a professional: eating habits, how to take care of your body, and stuff like that.”
The Canucks defenseman is one of just 28 active players to play more than 1,100 games in the NHL, a feat he has accomplished over 17 seasons. Myers had one goal and eight points this season. Grimes, in his fifth NBA season, is averaging a career-best 15.3 points for the Sixers.
The sports might be different, but the daily routines of the NBA and NHL schedules are nearly identical. They play 82 regular-season games from fall to spring, with a similar playoff and travel structure.
That means that whenever Grimes is going through something, Myers said usually has experienced it, too, and they’ll talk about it.
“Watching him on the court, you can tell his confidence and his mindset just have come such a long way,” Myers said. “I remember that progression when I was a young kid from 20 to 25, it looked very, very similar.”
Grimes said Myers has been critical in teaching him how to be a pro. He’s nowhere close to Myers’ longevity in his sport, but seeing the habits and routines up close helped him transition into the league.
“Listening to your body if you have nagging injuries,” Grimes said. “[Myers would] always say that he would take some lighter days or try to do that. Early in my career, I would just try to grind and grind and grind, and then an injury gets worse, and your body just breaks down a little bit.”
Myers, who has played in cities that don’t have NBA teams his entire career, has seen Grimes play in person in the NBA only once, when the Canucks’ extended road trip to New York gave him a day off on a night with a Knicks home game.
Unfortunately, Grimes played just a few seconds before he suffered an injury and missed the rest of the game.
“I showed up a couple minutes in; the game had started already,” Myers said. “A couple minutes went by, he came in, and like a minute later, he was laying on the floor, hurt. I was bad luck that day, and that was the only time I’ve been able to overlap with him.”
One day, Myers hopes to have another opportunity to see his younger brother play a full game in person, but he’s been following his career from afar. Grimes is a bit luckier — he gets to see Myers play about once a year, including on Monday night for the first time in Philly, since all the teams he has played on have been in cities with NHL teams of their own. He also has made trips to Vancouver and Buffalo.
“This is fun for me, to be a fan,” Grimes said. “Get rowdy, because hockey fans are completely different from NBA fans. They get real rowdy. I like to get rowdy with them, talk a lot of smack with the other fans if they’re in the arena.”
The Canucks had a cheering section at least 12 strong at the Flyers’ arena, including Grimes, their mother, and several other family members making the trip to celebrate having both brothers together around the holidays. The Canucks ultimately lost the game, 5-2, but Myers still gave them something to cheer about, earning a secondary assist on Vancouver’s first goal.
Myers, who now has three children of his own, couldn’t remember the last time they had a group this big together around the holiday season.
“Having this so close to Christmastime is a little bit more special,” Grimes said ahead of the game. “Knowing that Christmas is around the corner, our mom came up, a lot of our family came up for the game, so it’ll be pretty special.”
