Kings big man Richaun Holmes will be re-evaluated in two-to-three weeks due to a right shoulder injury, the team announced on Sunday, as relayed by Jason Jones of The Athletic (Twitter link).
Holmes recently underwent imaging that revealed an injury to his shoulder joint, with the 26-year-old now likely to miss several games. The team originally termed the injury a shoulder strain.
Holmes is enjoying a career-best season with Sacramento, averaging 13.1 points, 8.5 rebounds in 29.4 minutes per game through 37 contests in his first campaign as starting center. The Kings will greatly miss his interior production — head coach Luke Walton praised the fifth-year player earlier this month.
“He’s been an anchor for us,” Walton said, per Jason Anderson of the Sacramento Bee. “He plays with that passion and fire that I think the Sacramento fan base really gets behind because he just leaves it all out there every time he plays. He’s made a lot of winning plays for us. He’s having a heck of a year so far.”
Holmes’ injury will allow other frontcourt players to see increased minutes for the Kings, with seventh-year center Dewayne Dedmon worth monitoring the rest of the month. Dedmon was fined $50K for publicly requesting a trade last month and is in the first season of a three-year, $40MM contract.
The Kings have been hammered with injuries during the first half of the season, owning the third-worst record in the Western Conference at 15-24. On the flip side, the team is just two games back from the eighth seed in the conference, with upcoming home contests scheduled against Orlando on Monday and Dallas on Wednesday.
It’s never really a good time for an injury, but this might be an exception for the Kings. They can showcase Dedmon for the next 2-3 weeks and possibly get more value in a trade for him than if he was just a throw in.
Dedmon has no value. There are many ways to move him since bad salary swaps are easy to do but as far as getting an asset for him that time has passed.
Easy 1 for 1 would be Waiters. Both “bad contracts” given that neither teams wants the player.
Thank you for not getting my point at all. Th point is to build his value over the next little bit since he will get obvious playing time now. You are not going to get a lot for him regardless, but it’s a lot easier to move a guy playing well versus moving a guy keeping the bench from floating away.
It does make me laugh that more and more of “The Process” guys from Philly are turning out to be valuable role players and sometimes key players over time. Always liked Holmes as well as Covington, and of course they aren’t the only ones in the “Process diaspora” out there.
Some of those guys got too expensive for their role or upside. TJ, Holmes, Grant, Ish. Like Nerlens almost got 80M but hes an idiot and turned it down. RoCo, can only do one thing well and that is defend he is league average from 3 and he can’t put the ball on the floor. They had some okay dudes come thru and facilitate trades that went from Process to Contender.
Any way you look at it, those Process guys who were all drafted by Hinkie have become steady contributors as they have distributed through the league. You can dis them, but how many teams can say that their draft picks for 5 years straight have become consistent contributors?
Uh, calling someone league average in one area and better than average in another area is to say that they are actually quite good.
My point is that the guys they found during the ‘wilderness years’ were pretty good players, ‘gamers’ if you will, and mostly are still in the league. They were trashed when they played for Philly, as somehow bad players because Philly was ‘tanking’. Only issue was that there was no “exceptional” star at that time, and Philly took the longer road rather than immediately spending cash on expensive ‘free agents’. They trained some good players (not great, but good) during that period – and now they are getting criticized because they don’t have enough depth, even though they have stars. It is clearly ironic.
I agree with the irony angle.
Getting Tobias H may have been a good trade but they promptly had to give him max, squeezing others out.
Some say the team that gets to be #1 is the one with players on bargains, and some transcendency. Philly lacks the first thing now. Simmons (last year) & Thybulle are still on rookie scales, so there’s that.
For now it’s all warm and fuzzy for the 76ers. This summer a least one of their Big 4 payroll tickets will have to go.
Could have a new process with Simmons only one left.