As aggressive as the Nuggets have been with roster changes this offseason, one of their most intriguing and mysterious additions will be someone who was already on the team.
DaRon Holmes II won’t have any injury-related limitations on his minutes when he returns from a torn right Achilles tendon this week, Nuggets Summer League coach Andrew Munson said.
Holmes is Denver’s most anticipated aspect of the Summer League squad. He was drafted 22nd overall last year with a pick that cost the Nuggets three future second-rounders. His combination of size, defensive versatility and perimeter shooting was too tantalizing for former general manager Calvin Booth to resist.
And he had just started to display his potential last July at the NBA’s annual showcase event for young players, when his rookie ambitions came to a screeching halt. The season-ending injury occurred late in the fourth quarter of his Summer League debut at Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas.
Now he’ll try again on Thursday (7:30 p.m. MT) in the same stuffy gymnasium at UNLV. Denver opens against the Milwaukee Bucks.
“He’s had a pretty solid build-up to this point,” said Munson, an assistant coach who was tapped to lead the Summer League team for the second consecutive year. “He’s played with our guys most of the summer. He’s not going to play 40 minutes (per game), and we don’t have any back-to-backs to worry about, but he should be pretty much full go this summer.”
The Nuggets didn’t have a pick in the NBA draft last month, leaving Holmes and Hunter Tyson as the only players on their 15-man roster who’ll be competing in Vegas alongside undrafted rookies and G League hopefuls. They’ll play five games over the course of about a week.
Listed at 6-foot-9 and 236 pounds, Holmes’ place on the frontcourt depth chart is somewhat murky. He’s a little on the short side to be a full-time backup center for Nikola Jokic, but he has more competition at power forward, between Zeke Nnaji and Peyton Watson, both of whom have been used at the four in past seasons.
“We want to see him do a little bit of both, play the four and the five,” Munson said. “See if he can switch onto some guards.”
Holmes has acknowledged before that power forward is his more natural position, but he’s trying to embrace potential minutes at the five with open arms. After all, the Nuggets have a recent history of disconnect over which position Nnaji should play with a similar body type; Booth always insisted he needed to be a four, while former coach Michael Malone often played him at center.
The franchise is under new management these days. Still, Holmes recognizes versatility will be essential.
“Anywhere they put me, I’ll be comfortable playing,” the Dayton alum said. “I spent a lot of summer time playing the five. … I trust what the coaches have. I trust this team, the organization.”
Aside from his ability to switch on screens and defend in space, his 3-pointer will also be put to the test in a game environment for the first time in a year. It’s an asset he fully added to his game during his final season of college basketball, when he shot 38.6% on 2.5 attempts per game. Proving that it wasn’t a one-year outlier remains a vital component as he hopes to carve out a long NBA career.
And injury rehab can be an obstacle when trying to maintain the successful mechanics of that shot.
“It can be pretty difficult, because you have to trust what the trainers are saying (while recovering),” Holmes said. “So if they’re like, ‘Hey, we don’t want you coming back in the gym tonight — rest your legs, rest your Achilles,’ I might try to fight back and say no, I want to get shots up. But I have to listen to what they have to say. They went to school for eight-plus years doing that. I grew up playing basketball. So that’s the fight. It’s more of a mental thing. But I listen to what they have to say. And I trust my form. I’ve been still getting up shots, but I listen if they say (to rest).”
He still firmly believes the shot has been improving all this time. That makes sense, though, coming from “maybe the most positive person I’ve ever met in my life,” as Munson describes Holmes.
Rust is to be expected on Thursday, but the 22-year-old is even looking forward to that. Anything to be back on the court.
“It’s going to be fun,” he said. “It’s going to be exciting. I’ll make some new mistakes.”
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