The Sacramento Kings are likely to face considerable competition in their quest to retain starting center Richaun Holmes, according to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype. Scotto reports that the Dallas Mavericks, Toronto Raptors, and Charlotte Hornets are all expected to be interested in Holmes once free agency begins.
Holmes is an unrestricted free agent, and is the top center on the free agent market. Scotto notes:
What’s going to happen with Richaun Holmes is going to dictate the free agent market for the rest of the big men, including Nerlens Noel.
Scotto also notes that Holmes leaving would pretty much only be about the money.
He’s loved Sacramento as the franchise that gave him an opportunity on the court and the ways the fans have treated him off the court.
At the end of the day, the Kings are limited to offering only the amount allowed under Early Bird Rights (Tim Maxwell has previously done a full rundown on how the numbers work). Teams with cap space can easily outbid the Kings for Holmes’ services. Holmes has previously been reported as seeking $18-$20 million a year, but even if he found a deal for $14-$15 million a year it would be more than the Kings can offer.
Of course, the Kings can still try to create space via trades, which could render all of the moot.
Free agency begins August 2nd at 6 PM ET, with the moratorium ending on August 6th.
The usual suspects for Holmes.
90/10 odd that he is gone at the 1951 casino.
1951 also 90/10 odd.
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I am definitely not one to use “odd” as a pejorative.
1951 is completely odd. I mean, every single number there is odd.
1
9
5
1
Good teams keep good players. Still young. Getting better every year. Plays defense. And cares. I jettison contracts to keep him
Can you clarify what you mean by “jettison?” I understand that it means that the contracts would be gone, but by what method?
Napear just says stuff without backing it up.
I’m sexy and you know it.
clap your hands!
Something like this, probably:
I don’t know if this improves the cap situation, but I’d show up for this.
Other teams open up cap space all the time. It can be done
Knicks might be a good trade partner to take on salary
I’m going to miss him and his parents¦ favorite sports parents by far!
Getting ready to watch Holmes walk for nothing this deadline like…
Watching Holmes go like:
Later Sherblock Holmes
The weird thing is that it almost looks like Martin Short.
On the one hand, I love Holmes. And, I’ll be frustrated if a talent-starved team lets one of its 4 best players walk for nothing two years in a row. On the other hand, $18M per is STEEP!
This is where I am. I would love to keep Holmes, but he is also far from a perfect or irreplaceable player. If another team that thinks they are on the cusp wants to pay him $18-20M, I’d feel bad losing him and would also be happy he got paid, but I’d try to replace him with someone like Noel for a fraction of the price.
I would be very nervous about giving him something like 4/$80 even if we had the cap space available. But would be especially hesitant to spend assets to jettison a contract in order to pay him that much money.
That said, we’ll see what the offers are. I could see Dallas going big to try to appease Doncic and to get over the hump in the playoffs. I am less convinced that it’s in the Hornets or Raptors best interest to spend that much on a talented, but limited center. Though I guess I wouldn’t be too surprised if the GM who threw a ton of money at Mozgov and Rozier and who was the other GM trying to get Barnes spent a ton on Holmes.
That’s all fine and dandy but did the Kings not have a price in mind and a sense of the coming market BEFORE the trade deadline?
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out and if he walks and the Kings are left holding a bag of nothing then I will be very discouraged about the acumen of this FO.
It was a risk for sure. But no one knows what we could have got for him (none of these teams was sending us a pick for him at the deadline). That’s the counterfactual we all have to live out as fans and it takes time to tally the evidence…we don’t know if the only offer we got was for a 2nd rounder from the Lakers. Would you rather have taken that offer or let him walk for free lol?!
There were playoff teams that would have given you something. Heck, even taking a flier on a young struggling player like Kevin Knox – just an example so don’t go all crazy on Knox is trash takes! – or Nesmith or someone.
I am sure you could have rolled the dice on some player, which is better than having nothing to show for it!
Agree with SBK. Aaron Gordon got Hampton and a first. Fournier got two 2nd round picks. We couldn’t even find a decent package for Barnes having perhaps a career year.
I really don’t think we were getting more for Holmes on an expiring than a 2nd round pick (and probably a bad one considering the only teams offering one may have been a contender). Now if we lose him for nothing, then maybe that late 2nd looks better than getting zero.
However, it’s reasonable there was a calculation that we’d rather take a 50% chance Holmes walks and 50% chance we can resign him for a reasonable contract over getting a late 2nd round pick.
I’d honestly rather have the cap space and an attempt at resigning Holmes than a late 2nd. This team was close to the playoffs last year and I think could have played their way into the playoffs had things broken differently.
Holmes missed 39 of 144 games. That’s over a quarter of the games. He’s never played 75 games or 2000 minutes in a season. The Kings defense was atrocious….. with Holmes on the floor.
An useful player to have, obviously. But it’s not some great issue if he walks either. You can replace the Richaun Holmes’ of the world.
I agree with this all the way. If the offer was a second or someone like Kevin Knox quality (which feels reasonably accurate) even if I thought I had a less than 1/3 chance of retaining Holmes, I turn that deal down. Taking a chance you might resign him either Early Bird or figuring a way to clear space, far outweighs the worth of the asset you might have received back. I do not see a situation where they ship him and then resign him in off season without overpaying. That just doesn’t really happen except for maybe a upper echelon playoff team.
Plus, no one wants to hear it, but you still got to keep chasing the 8th seed for the last 25 games. That’s not nothing, when shipping him probably doesn’t greatly enhance your tanking odds and the Kings 5 games clear of the bottom 5-6 teams at the deadline. But I think the reason stated above previously is the far better reason not to trade him though.
Note: SptsJunkie beat me to post…but same general idea : )
Well this is why Monte gets paid what he does and we see what he can do. He made those trades at the deadline knowing exactly what it did to their space and their ability to retain Holmes. So either he has plans to move contracts around to make space for Holmes or he never planned on being that interested in a big number for Holmes and has an alternative plan. Unless he gets lucky and the market isn’t what is indicated.
I don’t think he didn’t game plan this scenario out back in March…we just don’t know what the game plan is or whether we will like the results.
Be an interesting couple of weeks.
Very well said.
He tried to walk away from Bagley to get cap room as well. If he pulled that off he would have more options.
I really want to like McNair, and we don’t know what happens with him and Vivek nor what the larger plan is, but losing Bogi and Holmes for nothing in back to back offseasons leaves a sour taste in my mouth – especially when you run an already talent-starved team.
State taxes will always harm the Kings.
Yet, somehow not the Warriors, Lakers or Clippers. Huh.
And the Heat. Don’t forget the Heat.
Honestly, the taxes argument is also very complicated.
Usually people look at income taxes and see that some states like Texas are far lower than California and assume that’s a massive advantage and a player will be much richer living in Texas with no income taxes.
However, all states need to pay their bills and they will always get their money to do so. It just varies if they get that revenue from state income taxes, local income taxes, sales/excise taxes, or property taxes.
Here is an analysis of all 50 states effective tax rates: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494
Yes, some states are higher or lower, but to compare two perceived extremes:
Big ole, tax and spend California: 9.48%
Personal freedom, small govt Texas: 8.19%
The big difference is that California has a more aggressive income tax. And Texas has much higher sales and property taxes. And the difference for an NBA player maybe even smaller, as you have to pay taxes in other states where you work. So a Texas player still might end up paying a % of money in taxes to other states unlike an engineer who works every day in an office in Dallas.
I’m not saying they are identical or that a player might not be able to play for a Texas team, rent a relatively cheap apartment in Texas, buy a mansion for the offseason elsewhere, and make all of their big purchases in states with a smaller tax – but for a lot of players who want to buy a big house and have their family live in the same city as their team, the differences end up being far more negligible than we often perceive.
We’ve got us a Tax Guy!
Thanks for the explainer.
Well…there goes another KANGZ excuse…
we’ll always have the India trip
That was basketball genius. Expose an a entire country to the Kangz and destroy the players before the season even starts.
Wait a minute, I just realized Texas is like “Taxes”, but like, all backwards.
More like Tickses.
That’s true in the aggregate, but for a player making $15M a year the tax rates make a huge difference. CA top rate is 13.3% so for people with very high incomes the difference is huge, but for the average person it’s not nearly so much. Bottom line is I agree with BHE that if your team is good enough people will come and play there regardless. Taxes never hurt the Lakers unfortunately.
SPTSJUNKIE’s point, which is correct, is that just looking at the top marginal tax rate doesn’t actually tell the story. When you consider all aspects of taxation in our lives, the way NBA players are taxes, AND the underlying fact that as wealthy people they have access to nearly endless avenues to reduce their tax burden, the true differences are much much smaller. Ultimately, top marginal income tax rate is WAY down the list of deciding factors when players consider where to play.
There’s an analysis of Texas vs California taxes that basically says that you’re only better off in Texas if you’re rich (which professional athletes are).
Snowflake warning: Politics
Yep, the tax thing is really a red herring with respect to sports. Not to mention (and a CPA is free to correct me) they’re taxed on where the games are played.
Really, it’s a political argument disguised as a sports argument.
As they clearly have with the Lakers and Warriors.
I know, I know: “Gubmint bad.”
Because LA and Sacramento are the same markets. Oops.
Uhm…
Because Northern California and Southern California are two separate states, like North Dakota and South Dakota.
Oops.
I grew up in south Sacramento. I’m guessing that’s why my parents paid taxes differently than folks in West Sacramento did.
Also, when John Denver sings “…(W)west Virginia…”
is he talking about West Virginia, or the western part of Virginia?
CA state taxes harm us all, yet we’re still here. I don’t think players put that much thought into state taxes as we think.
The Texas teams have never really been FA destinations even with their tax advantage.
Or Memphis. Or Seattle (too soon?)
The taxes weren’t the main reason I moved away, it was the price of housing. Just stupid in some areas. No thanks, see ya CA.
Door, ass, etcetera.
Love Holmes, but he’s not worth what he’s going to get. Over paying is the last thing this franchise needs considering we’re already capped with a trash roster.
He gone
…..he’s gone
Oh I, oh I
I better learn how to face it
he’s gone, he’s gone
Oh I, oh I
I’d pay the devil to replace him
he’s gone, and he’s gone
Oh why, what went wrong?
Soon:
“Everybody’s high on consolation”
Him gone
I’ll be rooting for him, no matter where he’ll be and I wish he gets a nice paycheck.
worked hard on both ends of the floor. One of the few who actually cared about defense. Let’s see how we replace that if he’s gone.
I’ll be happy/sad to see him get a championship elsewhere
King’s fans,
Forever living vicariously through the success of former Kings.
It’s telling for this organization that asset management and ass hat management sound so similar.
A franchise would be nuts to pay anything near Holmes’ asking price of 18-20 mil. The Hornets are the only team I can see paying over 10 mil a year for Holmes which is the absolute max the Kings should offer. There’s very few teams with the salary cap space and positional need to pay anything close to his asking price.
I’d say he’s worth $12 million max.
Holmes leaving for nothing was easily forseeble, and it’s a failure on the part of the front office if it happens. They should be able to think past the end of their nose. If he ends up leaving for nothing, Holmes should have been dealt at the deadline. And yes, he had more than zero value at that point.
Hornets, Raptors, Mavs to Monte:
This Kings’ TV show is about letting assets walk for
I know the teams that are cited in this report have some cap space and center positions are a bit in question, but I’m not sure it makes a ton of sense for all of them.
Dallas unless it pulls some deal is stuck with Porzingis and that huge contract. He has played 100% of his minutes as a center the last 2 years. I’m not sure how Holmes fits into that equation at 15+ million. Assuming Richardson opts in (Which I imagine he would off last season), article I read said they have about 21 mill in practical space. If they move Zinger, sure I could see Holmes floaters for days off Luka passes. But if they can’t or won’t, I don’t see how they spend most of their space on Holmes. They also have a Tim Hardaway resign question.
Raptors already have Chris Boucher, who is an undersized center as well. He played pretty well last year (83% as a C) and started for them down the stretch. Similar production as Holmes. Stretches the floor too. He makes 7 mill, free agent next year. If they really like him, do they save Center dollars for him after next year? They could run a small center Holmes/Boucher combo, but that doesn’t really leave them with a bigger body at all (Had Baynes last year)
Hornets makes sense. Zeller is also free agent…don’t think he would be terrible to look at for Kings on the cheaper side. HIs per 100 numbers aren’t wildly different than Holmes, but Holmes is definitely better overall.
As someone said, I do think it’s a small crowd of teams with space and would be interested in his exact skill set. Will a team bid against themselves?
&ct=g
I like Holmes so much and love rooting for him. I really wish he would’ve been able to stick around to play in front of a raucous crowd at G1C during a meaningful playoff game. I’m sure he would’ve played so hard that the fans would be chanting his name.
Going to miss that sweet push-shot. 🙁
Kosta,
You clearly have a bias for sweet push shots.
LaBradford Smith had a push shot, didn’t he?
One of the original Doctors of Dunk. ¦ and they operate ¦ on the other team.
Dr. Kimbro, scalpel please
i stand corrected. Just outdated myself. Labradford was Not an original dr of dunk, but they did call themselves that and made a cool vhs video with Jerome Harmon and Felton Spencer and the others. I always thought they were the originals.
Well, it looks like Holmes is gone, too bad, loved he and his family. Need a big in this draft, I just hope that it will be Segun. I would hate to see us lose another talented Euro like Vlade did with Luka. Monte did great last year with Hali, can’t wait to see what he’ll do this year.
We are going to lose him for nothing. I’m sure our front office’s viewpoint on his offensive production in particular is that he benefitted from getting set up by Fox/Haliburton moreso than his skillset. I’m sure they feel they can plug in a cheaper player and get similar value for whatever reason.
If they do feel that way there is a huge chance they will be proven wrong ! Nothing worse than unnamed , unknown and unsigned players !
Alright. Holmes is leaving in free agency this year. Bogi left last year. Kings are saving up cap room for something. Sincere question, if you’re Monte and looking to pair Fox with two other stars, how do you do it? Sell the farm, I’d love everyone’s best takes. Hali, all the picks, Barnes, everything. Get two stars for Fox.
First, Fox needs to develop into a star, then Hali and then you hope you hit on a draft pick. Which means we need more draft picks. Try and get a first for Barnes.
Buy low for players with upside who are available – both Reddish and Heurter were available the last year. We couldn’t pick one up? Perhaps in a Bogi SnT?
I wanted Huerter too prior too free agency start…but there was zero reason for Hawks to have done that once the Bucks deal fell through. Kings were willing to move Bogi for Dante D at about 14-15 mill per. Hawks probably had very good sense Kings weren’t going in on him at 18mill.
Hali hitting the press as untouchable was a smoke screen to raise his value. Monte overhauled the bench at the trade deadline. All starters not named Fox are next. Morey rarely made draft picks. FO’s gonna swing. Thus, all starters are gone, all future picks may be gone. What can we get?
Yep. Except Fox is on the block too for the right deal.
Assets to trade:
Hield $22.5M
Barnes $20.2M
Bagley $11.1M
Wright $8.5M
Haliburton $4M
Future first round picks and swaps
Where’s Fox?
Fox is likely the piece being built around. 23 year old scoring 25 points a game and improving. He’s unlikely to yield a better player. For example, Sixers demanding nothing short of Fox for Simmons. Fox is better than Simmons.
Hence, keep Fox and find what you can.
does the CBA allow multi year player options? If Rishaun really loves sac, he could start with the early bird and then decline future years and sign for more if cap gets better?
I’ll give McNair credit when it’s due but this was an idiotic move to keep him at the deadline in pursue of this so called play-in
You can said the same to the situation of Hield, Balgey and Barnes……..
Well he didn’t want to trade Bagley for a bag a chips so it makes sense he’s still here. Hield may just been so low of value that trading him last season doesn’t make sense. Barnes is probably the same situation as Holmes except he’s under contract for two more seasons so we aren’t missing out by keeping him
It’s a tournament, where the involved teams have to win to play their way into the playoff.
And what is the minimum that you’d have found acceptable as a return for Holmes at the deadline? Because I’d bet that it’s more than was actually offered.
And they failed, and Holmes may walk for nothing. This is not how a losing organization stops being a losing organization. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
How does a losing organization stop being a losing organization then, exactly?
Get Chris Paul.
Or Julius Randle + other thingies.
If Holmes walks for nothing, anything more than nothing would have been an acceptable return.
Mavericks are interested¦ lol.
So awesome that we can’t keep Holmes because Vlonte McNair gave Pervis Bagley another $11.5 million to do jack shit as usual.
And I never want to hear the small market excuse again as to why we can’t win here ¦ Milwaukee just proved you can win as a small market non-super team.
You know how you compete as a small market?
You draft Luka F. Doncic when you have the chance.
The small market excuse has always been nonsense. Shit, the model franchise for the past 20+ years is a bottom 5 market. To say nothing of the fact that the Kings are closer to the middle of the pack in terms of market size than they are to the bottom.
It’s not an excuse and obviously success can be done¦but we shouldn’t act like it’s not starting from a deficit compared to LA, New York, Chicago, SF, Philly, Houston, etc.
“Well, just because larger-market teams get local TV & radio contracts, plus other ancillary income from merch sales, etc., doesn’t mean that all of that extra money is helpful in building a better team.”
Baffling.
It isn’t really a deficit. It certainly changes your approach though. As is your point, stars aren’t going to collude to meet up in Sacramento. But, that in itself, is an opportunity for a smart franchise to take advantage of. After having stars in pocket, the most valuable currency in the NBA is elite draft assets. Which the Kings have had a ton of over the years. Heck, we just watched a Finals between two teams built without any major FA acquisitions.
It frequently takes incredible luck for a non free agent destination, small market to nail sustained championship level success in modern NBA.
The Spurs won the lottery with a once or twice in a generation obvious slam dunk prospect. Only year in lottery during a 30 year stretch. Pretty lucky. The Bucks got a top 40 player of all time at #15. Good for them in picking him, but they had no freaking clue he would be this good.
Yes good orgs capitalize when given that opportunity. Kings got that lucky stroke and shit the bed. It’s not impossible but really really hard to come back from that and catch the lucky break again¦or chain together numerous moves to make a contender when you can’t just go buy 1-2 big free agents.
I don’t even care about sustained championship level success. At this point, I’d be thrilled to even have been the Jazz or the Blazers over the last half decade.
100% agree. Just pointing out the differences when people say small markets can do it, see San Antonio and Milwaukee, so Kings should be winning titles. Sizeable leap between that and what the Blazers and Jazz have done thus far. That level of success is definitely attainable.
Careful¦..you might hurt his feelings and daddy will run his mouth on twitter again.
Richaun Holmes possesses that rare combination of coming to Sacramento and not having his career destroyed.
Holmes has an opportunity to get paid and play for a legitimate NBA team. He is a smart man. Holmes is gone. Holmes was gone the second they signed Bagley’s extension which took cap space that could be used on any player that actually plays.
Hield and Bagley have crippled this team in so many ways.
Purely dreaming here but¦maybe after Holmes leaves there is a deal that brings him back? Bagley, draft picks, and cash for Holmes? At least they are investing in a known future instead of potential.
I meant option not extension. The Kangz exercised his option for the fourth year. I hope they don’t sign him to an extension¦¦
I don’t think the Bagley option effected Holmes ( ask Tim Maxwell) but the trade for Wright may have.
I think Holmes is gone.
I love the guy.
However, from an objective point of view, what is he worth? How much money and how much “lost opportunity” cost?
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