According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, multiple teams are expressing interest in Sacramento Kings starting center Richaun Holmes, including the Toronto Raptors and the Charlotte Hornets. Although no potential compensation was mentioned by Shams, his colleague Sam Amick recently shared that Holmes would probably command the most value of any Kings player outside of De’Aaron Fox and Tyrese Haliburton, and with Harrison Barnes’ known market sitting somewhere around a first round pick and a young player, Richaun’s value could be sky-high for a resetting team like Sacramento.
The prospect of moving on from Holmes presents an interesting conundrum for the Kings, as he’s undoubtedly one of their most impactful players, but he’s also set to be an unrestricted free agent this summer. Due to the fact that he only signed a two-year deal with Sacramento, the Kings do not posses his full bird rights, meaning they can’t go over the cap to secure him to whatever deal they desire. Instead, their early bird rights will allow Monte McNair to ink him to a contract starting at 175% of his final year’s pay or 105% of league average salary in the 2020-2021 season, whichever is greater. That would put Holmes at a starting pay of around $10.5 million with 8% non-compounding raises, but that’s probably too low for Richaun’s expected market. If the Kings want to guarantee themselves a shot at retaining their starting center, they’ll need to open up a chunk of cap space, a challenging task if they’re not looking to move Harrison Barnes and Buddy Hield’s market is as cold as it’s been reported.
The other interesting twist to Holmes garnering interest is Sacramento’s recent link to Atlanta Hawks big man John Collins. Travis Schlenk is reportedly seeking a first round pick and a young player in exchange for Collins’ services and restricted free agent status, and the Kings could theoretically use assets from a Holmes deal to properly compensate Atlanta. And with Collins due to get paid this summer, potentially even at a max contract rate, cashing out on Richaun Holmes right now to avoid paying the front court a combined $45 million may be the smart move for Monte McNair. Collins would also represent a palatable compromise to any factions within the Kings ownership and management groups, as his acquisition would strike a balance between a full tank for draft picks and a win-now stance that isn’t realistic for this season.
If the Kings were to move on from Holmes, they would almost certainly be waving the white flag on the season and setting their sights on a top-5 draft pick. Holmes is one of the league’s top net rating differential leaders, as Sacramento has been outscored by 10.4 points per 100 possessions with Richaun on the bench. And with Marvin Bagley out for at least a few weeks, an already weakened big man rotation would be completely devastated, especially on the defensive end, even if John Collins was headed Sacramento’s way. The Kings would likely lose the vast majority of their remaining games and tumble down the standings quite quickly, perhaps to the satisfaction of Monte McNair.
The NBA trade deadline is Thursday, March 25th.
If the Kings are truly interested in Collins and are willing to pay him big long term, does that mean they are done with the Bagley experiment?
Bagley and a first is the only package that makes sense, so I’d assume so. Somehow dumping Buddy’s contract becomes an ultra-priority if they get Collins, though.
I think it is going to be really hard to dump Buddy without taking salary back. There is absolutely no way to keep all of Buddy, Barnes, and Bagley while also adding Collins and hoping to re-sign Holmes. It is impossible.
Impossible while staying under the cap, but I think you’re right because Vivek doesn’t strike me as a going over the cap guy
If they want Collins and can’t offload at least 2 of Bagley, Barnes, and Buddy, I don’t see how they can pay both Collins and Holmes.
Agreed.
Tim’s last paragraph made me all tingly and warm inside!
I would like Miles Bridges from the Hornets. Could be a nice piece to fill in for Barnes if we move him.
After Friday’s game, I’m half-surprised Ainge didn’t offer the moon to get Barnes, Hield, and Holmes. All three of really lit up the Celtics.
The Hornets seem like they’d have a less-than-optimal chance of re-signing Holmes. They’re a playoff team, probably, but not a contender. The Kings might have an easier chance to get him back as a free agent under those circumstances, but I don’t know. I imagine he’d have a lot of fun running in that offense.
I was annoyed when Vlade got Holmes on just a 2-year deal and didn’t secure his Bird rights.
Hoping that he will re-sign here after this season seems as much wishful thinking as it was with regard to Giles. I don’t doubt that they genuinely love the city and fans, but that doesn’t mean they believe that staying here is the best career move.
Agreed, Holmes had been solid everywhere that he’d played, and for the money, why not go with a longer deal?
Probably wanted to keep it short so that he could throw a max deal at Bjelica this offseason.
This was because Holmes was signed with the Room exception. Holmes got the max that the Kings (or any team in that position could for that matter) on that deal. The real problem is the Kings didn’t value Holmes more than Joseph or Dedmon that off-season. And Holmes wasn’t seen as a major signing at the time, either. The issue here was assessment of basketball value, not mismanagement of cap resources.
Holmes is a productive NBA player who has proven this over multiple seasons. Giles has yet to have such a season. Thus we are talking apples and oranges here, and frankly it’s being kind to even call Giles an orange at this point. It’s more like Giles is one of the 8 trillion nuts a squirrel buries and then eventually remembers at some point.
Agreed completely. Good point.
Although to be fair, no other team did, either. Not sure why, though, Holmes was productive at his other stops nearly every time he was on the floor.
It seems like a lot of guys who get drafted in the second round, or get into the league as free agents just get stuck in being undervalued as far as salaries are concerned. Even Lou Williams, three-time Sixth Man of the Year has never made more than $8 million in a season. I’m not a Kuzma fan, but going by what the market offers, his salary is a pretty good value.
I’d love for Holmes to be on the roster next season, but I also want him to get paid what he’s worth.
Jimmer Ham said something interesting about Walton in that podcast he did with Jerry, Will and Tony: That Walton saw value in Holmes as a starting C even when the Vlade FO didn’t necessarily. I’ve thought along those lines that perhaps other FO’s also had a similar miscalculation as well. Mistakes, after all, do get made. Even by qualify FO’s.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Holmes get more than the mid level which as Tim notes is about 10.5 million or so……but does anybody here think Holmes gets more than a 3 year 45 million deal? If so, with whom and on what type of deal is my question.
If you move Bagley for a flier alone, that frees up money for you to do a 3 year 45 million deal for Holmes without moving Barnes or Hield. If you do Holmes new dea as you’ve done Barnes and Hield, you could frontload Holmes deal as well.
We’ll see how this goes. Teams could get funny with their money like they did in 2016, but I doubt that happens again. There was a ton of instant regret about all those deals signed that summer Kevin Durant being one of the few exceptions.
The Kings could also just do a 1 + 1 deal with Holmes with a player option in year 2. They’d have his full Bird rights next offseason, and could restructure his deal at that point.
An option although I doubt that would be something that enticing to Holmes and especially his agent.
I guess the argument would be that he could essentially get a 4 year deal out of it. The 4th year $$ would probably be more money than he’d get if he took a 3 year deal this offseason and became a free agent in 2025.
Eh, I’m not turning down 45 million guaranteed this summer because I MIGHT get 65 million guaranteed in 2022. But that’s me.
Especially since this is Richaun Holmes, not a major star. But we’ll see.
Let me clarify, that’s an option under specific circumstances. If he gets $15 million on a 3 or 4 year deal from Sac or another team, then take the money. If his actual offers are closer to 3/$36 million or less, and the Kings can’t clear enough cap space, then a 1 + 1 makes some sense for Holmes and the Kings.
Fair enough. And incidentally I agree.
$15 mil per year feels right as far as the maximum offers he’ll receive, although I’d not be surprised to see him outperform that number. If the MLE/Vet exception is $10.5 mil, it’s tough to see him leave leaving so much money on the table to remain here, and rightly so.
I’ll be so bummed if we move on from Richuan.
He reminds me of a talented Michael “The Animal” Smith, and represents Sacramento so well!
Loved The Animal.
Oh for fuck’s sake…
https://twitter.com/TheNBACentral/status/1374022993689653257
*shrugs*
You shrug a lot. Hell, I think it’s pretty much required of all Kings fans to do so at this point.
A FRP is a pretty wide range of value, though. Like, Minnesota’s FRP is super valuable and Utah’s is probably worth less than Minnesota’s second rounder due to the way the contracts are slotted. I could totally see a contending team offering their late 20’s FRP and an expiring to bring in Bagley as a bench big.
The problem is his contract. What contending team is sitting on a good sized expiring and has the ability to pay Bagley $11M next year?
The alternative was to not pick up that option on Bagley’s contract. Rookie scale contracts work very differently, at some point I’m hoping people around here start realizing that.
The funniest trade IMO would be Bagley to the Mavs for like Dwight Powell and a heavily protected future first.
Bagley has to end up in Dallas or Atlanta for pure KANGZ karmic purposes.
There doesn’t seem to be a quote from Marvin Bagley III that confirms this.
I’d not be surprised if he felt like a fresh start would be good for him. I’d be inclined to agree, although I’d just assume keep him than get a crap return. The tweet is just needless shit-stirring at the deadline, because there’s not much going on.
I guess the only question that matters is: who is doing the shit stirring? If it’s his agent or someone in his camp then it kinda matters.
If you don’t have a quote, you don’t have a story, full stop. And I really don’t give a shit what anyone has to say about MBIII, unless he himself is saying it. It’d be nice if he would refute it, but it’s not really his job to waste his time dealing with the idiots that surround his father.
It’s exhausting, this constant shoring up of a narrative that may not even exist.
Um, it seems like we agree that this all depends on who is stirring up this shit.
The answer to that is the answer to whether this “narrative” exists or not, which is my point.
FYI – My personal views on Bagley the on-court NBA player are completely uninfluenced by any of this crap though.
Players are prohibited from making public trade requests under the collective bargaining agreement (Dedmon got fined $50k for doing so last season). Parents, on the other hand, are free to make public trade requests on their kid’s behalf.
…with or without their child’s knowledge/permission.
And literally anyone can make trade demands for a player, so drawing a distinction between the player and his parents isn’t all that illuminating.
It so odd to me that anyone thinks Bagley wouldn’t prefer a change in scenery at this point.
This is heading into Boogie convo territory. Not there yet, but man those debates about whether or not he demanded a trade where good times!
TRADE SEASON TIME.
I am moving on to the acceptance stage of my Kings grief. I accept that it is unlikely that the Kings will make the tough moves necessary to really swing for something more than mediocrity at this point.
https://twitter.com/TimMaxwell22/status/1374036573067440128
If something happens then I will be happy to be pleasantly surprised. If not … oh well, it’s just part of the Kings fandom ride. /shrugs
I would hope the “not that far from the playoffs” is just posturing by the FO to make sure teams come with their best offer.
But until we see how things shake out the playoffs comment has all the stank of Vivek trying to make that push to the 8th seed. Who knows maybe Vivek has lowered the bar and views the play in nonsense as “making the playoffs”.
https://twitter.com/SactownAnthony/status/1374037309390131201
Is the FO supposed to say we royally suck and we’re going to give away the farm because a guy pretending to be a championship banner won in a year without shot clocks think it’s bad form to keep veteran NBA players at this stage?
Don’t answer that 1951. I’m not sure I want to know the answer now. LOL
What, is this comment coming from a member who is calling himself a “guru?” 😉
I’m Captain Smartass to you buddy.
Eggs-Ackley!
Then I am Tom Hanks! I know how that movie ends!
Then I’m sending you a volleyball and a volcano. I know how those movies end, too.
I named my volleyball Luka. 🙁
You’re nothing if not consistent.
Lol. I was deployed on the ship that held that pirate in jail until his court date. That was 3 months of no internet or phone calls. Miserable.
Where was your homeport?
I also love the part where everyone shits all over Hield, while becoming more and more outraged that McNair hasn’t flipped him for something of value.
“everyone”
For someone who professes to dislike narratives without conclusive evidence!
😉
Do you really want me to go and collect links to the posts, even over the past week, where this sentiment is repeated ad nauseam? Even the podcast where it’s posited that if no trades are made, that it would be the biggest possible error McNair could make upholds the narrative.
But yes, my apologies to the vast minority of posters who haven’t declared such nonsense.
Seems to me that most of the Kings blogger/fans/radio show hosts/etc that I follow have long ago moved attention to Barnes, acknowledging that he is the more tradable of the two.
The drop in interest in/value of Buddy has been well covered. Heck, after the Sixers game most of Kings tweeter was laughing at the once-held-notion that the Sixers might want Buddy and be willing to give up Thybulle to get him!
Anywho, I am certainly one of your perceived “minority” for whatever that is worth!
Buddy is borderline untradeable and that is not Monty’s fault. I suppose if you are really stretching than you can put some of the decline in Buddy’s value on retaining Luke Walton, but I wouldn’t even go that far even though I think Luke should have been fired long ago.
I don’t understand what that has to do with what I said, but I’ll grant you that this is the consensus, with which I agree. I don’t think their relative values as trade pieces was ever in dispute, with Barnes being the more sought-after of the two.
That’s the first of two questions in my mind – do they see the play-in-game as a playoff success? And do they think just keeping this roster mostly as-is is building a winning culture/moving the franchise towards a perennial playoff team?
The real problem is, we don’t have the first clue what McNair is thinking (or why we should buy tickets to watch this team when we’re able to do so).
I’m less concerned about what Monte’s thinking than to what degree his thoughts are actually determining a course for the team.
If we know what he’s thinking, I suspect we could figure out the answer to your question.
But the local media says sources say, so …
https://twitter.com/JandersonSacBee/status/1374043277779992577
“Monte, Danny Ainge here. We’ll take Barnes and Holmes for Langford, Nesmith, and a first round pick.”
In my jaded view of this franchise when I see “sources” I immediately think that these “sources” are doing Viveks bidding.
Who does that leak paint in a favorable light? There is your source.
Imagine calling up Jason Anderson twice in one week to let him know you’re still not as dysfunctional as everyone has been saying.
I really don’t understand this either Marty. The easiest way to prove you’re not dysfunctional is…..to not act in a dysfunctional manner and not worry about what outside voices are saying.
Guru,
Silicon Valley Marketing Speak guru rolled out Shaq as partial owner because OPTICS matter to this owner most of all.
People who make and build shit go hide in the shop and make shit, while bullshit artists talk about what they can make.
The Shaq thing was huge. A window into someone’s soul.
Or lack of soul, rather. But I digress.
Yep, agreed on this whole thing 100%.
I want to thumb down this comment, not for the comment but the truth within the comment.
But instead I gave you the thumbs up.
I would think that ignoring all of the gossip and proceeding with your plan is not at all dysfunctional.
And no matter what happens this week, there will be an outcry of how entirely incompetent the front office is. It’s possible that there will be a good reason to feel that way, but under the circumstances, if no moves end up being made, that isn’t necessarily indicative of dysfunction. Teams seem to be making crap offers out of reflex that the GM is a moron. I’m ecstatic that McNair isn’t making moves just to show that he’s doing something.
So, we can arbitrarily and speculatively attach positive meanings to things that haven’t happened yet but not negative ones! Got it!
That’s awesome.
This philosophy didn’t change on the move from StR to TKH. 🙂
That’s an excellent point, and really highlights how stupid it is to assume that anyone other than McNair knows a single thing about the current state of trade talks, including the press. I’m sure they miss having their friend in charge, since he preferred to make sure that the media covered him positively, as opposed to, say, running the franchise competently.
It’s all hot air, ultimately.
Teams might be making realistic offers that many fans think are crap because they’re not taking contracts into consideration.
I don’t necessarily think that Ranadive’s MO is necessarily to meddle in specific decisions. Where I think the level of dysfunction really comes in is the specific kind of process he undergoes.
For instance, the Bogie match/non match situation. Vivek wants to match in part because he sees the public response. Or, optics in otherwords. McNair does not, it gets leaked to Amick and other media that would report it from someone on the McNair side of the FO (I’ve seen speculation it was Wes Wilcox which makes alot of sense to me) that Vivek is doing this. Vivek backs down on the need to match.
In Anderson’s article, he references Howard Beck talking about the perception of Vivek meddling on the Locked on Kings podcast with Matt George. That’s where much of the discussion in that piece came from.
So the question really is A) is the FO dysfunctional and B) if it’s not why waste your time saying McNair has control of the FO? I could see it being an attempt by Vivek and his people saying that Monte McNair is running the FO and it’s his call on how to proceed. If that’s all this piece was, graaaaaaavvvvvvy. I’m good with that. If it’s plausible deniability about speculation we hear over the next few days, oh goody.
The problem with Vivek Ranadive as I’ve seen it, and this dates back on whether or not to deal DeMarcus Cousins in 2013, the first major decision that needed to be made in the Ranadive, whatever optics that will paint Vivek in a light that seems favorable as he sees it will be where he falls on. The Bogi match, for instance, is an easy handy recent example.
If Vivek Ranadive can learn that the most important aspect of ownership, outside of having the financial resources which is the singular most impactful thing as we all know, is being able to take the criticism and not take it personally, that would help a lot. Because this deadline will be, IMO, based on your perspective of team building. If you want to tank, whatever decision Monte makes you probably won’t be happy with. If you are trying to keep the vets and possibly keep yourself close to a top 5 pick at the same, i.e. threading the needle, then you’ll probably be happy with the decisions Monte makes.If you want to make the playoffs, you probably won’t be happy because this group isn’t doing that either.
But I can guarantee that whatever the public generally thinks and whatever Vivek thinks the public thinks is going to influence the narrative painting him in whatever light that gets put out. Which is silly, but it is what it is. At some point I think we the fans just have to learn to roll our eyes and ignore it and hope that the people running the franchise that are supposed to be or just jump ship. We can’t sit around here hoping one day Vivek will get it. He either will or he won’t.
Well like James Ham said in the podcast, reporters build relationships within the org. If the “source” is available then the reporter will write articles that could paint the “source” in a good light. If there is no “source” or the “source” is unavailable to the media then reporters will have no problem being critical.
It gave some insight into how much the Ownership/FO leaks and how they, FO/Owners, are more influential with the media than the players.
My SacBee subscription expired. Is this a new article from Anderson, or is he just retweeting the original article?
We honestly could be a good coaching hire away from the playoffs… Will they find that, meh
We had a better coach 2 coaches ago.
even 1 ago but I get the joke 🙂
One does not trade an important contributor to the team ..
Badge Legend