DaRon Holmes II

Team: Denver Nuggets · Position: PF/C · Age during season: 24

Reported baseline

Holmes appeared in 25 games and averaged 3.7 points, 1.4 rebounds, 0.6 assists, 0.2 blocks and 0.8 threes in 8.4 minutes. He shot 50.8% from the field and 78.6% at the line.¹ The small sample followed the right Achilles tear and surgery that erased his original rookie season, so both his NBA rate baseline and workload ceiling remain unusually uncertain.²

Encyclopedia projection

Correction 2026-07-18: games cut from 32 to 26 and minutes from 5 to 3, with counting stats rescaled (rates held constant), because the team desk's primary minute model now assumes Peyton Watson is retained. Hoops Rumors reported July 17 that Denver values Watson "significantly" and believes it is positioned well to keep him, with the interested teams all over the cap, so retention is the modal outcome rather than a branch. On that path Holmes is outside the competitive-game rotation entirely and his season minutes come from blowouts and injury replacement. The prior 32-game, 5-minute line survives as the Watson-departs contingency. https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2026/07/nuggets-rumors-watson-joerger-roddy-diallo.html

9-cat per-game band: unranked. Points: no redraft value in the base role. Dynasty: deep stash only, with more theoretical upside than the redraft line shows.

Fantasy profile

• Helps: potential blocks plus threes from a big, low turnovers and acceptable efficiency.
• Hurts: present-day volume in every category; rebounding was especially light in the NBA sample.
• Floor: developmental/G League assignment and fewer than 300 NBA minutes.
• Ceiling: regains pre-injury mobility, passes multiple reserve bigs and reaches 16-18 MPG, creating a deep-league stocks/3PM profile.

Role, health, and confidence

Bagley is the early backup-center favorite, while Brazile and Nnaji also compete for the same minutes. Holmes' prior Achilles rupture is material to long-tail athletic projections, although his 2025-26 appearances establish that he returned to NBA game action. Roster confidence high, minutes low, rate low, availability medium-low.

Sources

Career record

Pre-NBA: Dayton, three seasons (2021-24): 12.8/6.1/2.3 blocks as a freshman (A-10 Rookie of the Year, school-record 81 blocks), 18.4/8.1/1.9 as a sophomore, 20.4 PPG/8.5 RPG/2.1 BPG as a junior — consensus second-team All-American, A-10 co-Player of the Year and A-10 Defensive Player of the Year. Draft: 2024, round 1, pick 22, Phoenix Suns; draft-night trade to Denver.

Most of his 2025-26 minutes came in the G League, where he averaged roughly 18.9 points, 6.4 rebounds and 2.9 assists in 32.6 minutes per game on assignment.

Durability: Tore his right Achilles in his July 2024 Summer League debut, three days after signing — the injury erased his entire rookie season. Returned fully healthy for 2025-26; the 25-game NBA total was role-driven (G League assignment), not a new injury.

Trajectory: The record shows an elite mid-major two-way big whose shot-blocking and improving three-point touch (44.4% on thin NBA volume, .786 FT) survived the Achilles tear, but who has yet to convert either into an NBA rotation role. In 2026-27 he competes with Bagley, Brazile and Nnaji for backup-big minutes behind Jokic and possibly Watson. He becomes fantasy-relevant only if he clears that queue and reaches roughly 16-18 MPG, at which point the blocks-plus-threes shape makes him a deep-league stocks specialist.

Career sources: ESPN career stats, StatMuse 2025-26 averages, Wikipedia

Open questions

• How much burst and lateral mobility returns in his second season after the Achilles injury?
• Does Denver develop Holmes as a center, power forward, or both?
• Can he rebound well enough to earn non-garbage-time center minutes?