Holmes keeps exceeding expectations
Richaun Holmes started the season on the outside of 76ers’ rotation. Now he’s played his way into more minutes and finds himself the team’s backup center.
PHILADELPHIA >> Richaun Holmes began the season as the 76ers’ No. 4 center. By last week, he had temporarily settled in at No. 2.
Rising on depth charts. It’s what he does.
“Oh, I have been a backup before,” Holmes was saying the other night, after contributing a double-double to a victory over the Washington Wizards. “Most definitely. In college, when I first got there, I was a backup. So it’s all about the grind. Keep working, keep trying to move up, keep working every second and it will pay off.”
Once a 6-foot-2 player, Holmes was 6-8 by the time he was ready to graduate from Lockport (Ill.) Township High School. But if he was destined to be an NBA center, it somehow was missed in the recruiting-sphere.
“I had a few D-2 schools interested, some D-3s,” he said. “But that’s all. So I decided to go to junior college.”
Holmes attended Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Ill., excelling for one season, then receiving a Division 1 offer. That’s offer. Singular.
“Bowling Green was the first school to recruit me,” he said. “And the only school to recruit me.”
Even then, ahead of any curve it may have been, Bowling Green didn’t initially treat Holmes as a proto-be.
“My first year there, I was a backup,” he said. “But I just kept working.”
By the time he was a senior at Bowling Green, Holmes was on his second head coach and was still listed at 6-8. But he averaged 14.7 points and 8.0 rebounds, helped the Falcons into the postseason CBI, then became a secondround draft 2015 choice of the Sixers, the 37th player taken overall. By then measured at 6-9, he would play 51 games as a rookie, work hard in the offseason, then run into a crowd.
With Joel Embiid finally cleared to play, and Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor still around, there was Holmes behind three recent lottery picks. Yet while circumstances would not permit him much initial upward mobility, they began to change. Embiid suffered a bone bruise, necessitating a lengthy recovery. Noel was traded. Okafor, whose last season ended early with a knee injury, was kept on a minutes restriction. And there was Holmes — with length, bounce and instinct for rebounding and blocking shots — subtly moving into increased relevance.
“I think the way he’s handled all of this mentally has impressed me the most,” Brett Brown said. “He’s been sort of the person that people forget about because of the logjam of ‘five’ men. And we all sort of think like, ‘Well, he should just accept it because he is behind Joel and Nerlens and Jahlil,’ and it’s, ‘Good, old, Richaun. Go to the DLeague, and it’s OK.’ And that doesn’t work. He’s a pro. And he has handled it.
“He has retained a competitiveness and has been a good teammate. And that, by a large margin, from the human side, has impressed me the most about him this year.”
There were dozens of reasons why Noel was traded last week, most financial, some of the basketball variety. But Bryan Colangelo made it clear that Holmes’ development was in that mix.
By Friday, as the Sixers were defeating the Wizards, 120-112, Holmes had 12 points and 10 rebounds in 26 minutes for his first career double-double.
“He came in and gave us a real bounce,” Brown said. “He plays different. Jahlil has that brute-force type of feel offensively. Richaun is more of a flyer. I thought he gave us a fantastic lift.”
The once-6-2 high school player is now 6-10. And his rides on the shuttle to the D-League, where he often has been re-assigned while the Sixers streamlined their center rotation, may be over.
Before the season is complete, he might even start some games.
Unless Okafor needs rest — and his knee can be an issue — he will likely start, the Sixers showcasing him for a possible offseason trade while taking advantage of his scoring touch. Okafor did score 28 points in a 110-109 loss Saturday in New York. It’s also possible that Tiago Splitter, recovered from hip surgery, could squeeze into the lateseason rotation.
Holmes, though, is not likely to budge.
“I don’t know what will happen,” he said, smiling. “But we’re going to keep working and keep trying to prove the doubters wrong.”