In a fair and just world, a Richaun “Rich Holmie Chaun” Holmes dunkilation (a video showing all the dunks a given player converted during a given timeframe of basketball, in case you forgot the definition) like the one you are either about to view or just finished viewing would contain at least twice as much as dunkage as this one. But, as you all know, we do not live in a fair and just world. Rather, we live in a cruel and meaningless world governed by the most malicious/capricious random number generator (who some people amusingly furnish with the title of “God”) that can be conceived. It is this RNG that has up until now decided that, despite his incredible mastery of the dunk, Holmes should be cursed to play in cities, on teams, for coaches, with teammates who brutally hold him down and prevent him from using his abilities to the maximum.
Just look at how easily he dunks it. He doesn’t even need to try, not even a little bit, he just takes a little hop and his head is basically at the rim. It’s actually almost a bad thing for the quality of this dunkilation, because he has to try so little to jam that he ends up conserving energy with weaksauce jams. A guy like Zach LaVine, you know his dunkilations are going to be sweet because if he only tries a little bit, you end up with a layup.
Even with the ease with which he gets up, his dunk totals are closer to landbound scrubs like LeBron James and Dwight Powell rather than dunking luminaries like JaVale McGee and Rudy Gobert. What’s going on here? First off, as a coach, when you have someone on your team who is as capable as Holmes at getting free points in the form of dunks, you make damn well sure that you leave that player on the court as much as possible. But Igor Kokoskov, like Brett Brown (otherwise known as “Butt Clown”) before him, repeatedly underutilized Holmes, leaving me to wonder how he got an NBA head coaching gig in the first place.
As further evidence of the twisted nature of the universe’s RNG, Kokoskov has followed Holmes to Sacramento. All I can do is laugh, honestly.
But it’s not all the coach’s fault. Sometimes, oftentimes, it’s the fault of the players surrounding him. Just from this season (we’re not even going to get into how bad Joel Embiid stunted him), I’ve identified these culprits, among others:
Devin Booker, who is more concerned with putting up worthless scoring numbers than being a good teammate. Sure, he dimed Holmes a fair amount in this vid, but do you think he wanted to? The only thing he REALLY wants to do, besides score, is complain about getting double-teamed.
Deandre Ayton, who makes it hard for Holmes to dunk because he clogs up the rim area with his bulkiness and lack of a true outside game. These two are almost unplayable together, and since Ayton was the rookie, it was absolutely his fault. He should be the one ceding minutes to Holmes, not the other way around.
Dragan Bender, who just sucks and makes everyone around him worse just by existing. I realize the Bucks signed him, and I remain cautiously optimistic (even if you make Giannis worse by your presence at least he’s already at a high level unlike everyone on the Suns), but there’s no way that him being on the court led to dunks by Holmes in any but the rarest circumstances.
Mike James, who actually wasn’t on the Suns last year but it seems like his malign presence from his stint with them could still be tainting the entire franchise, and thus affect Holmes’ dunking ability. What even happened to this dude anyway?
I could go on and on, especially if I went back to his three seasons with the 76ers. I’ve already implied Embiid’s role in this sad situation, but, Shawn Long, if you’re reading this, don’t think I forgot about you and what you did. I will NEVER forget. EVER. Don’t even think about showing your face near me.
We can hope for more dunks in the future from Holmes. Hoping is something that people do in even the direst of circumstances. Kokoskov might still be his coach, and there might be many inferior players vying for his minutes, but there’s always the chance that the RNG swings in his favor and some sort of cosmic syzygy happens, resulting in him dunking it 200 times this season. Perhaps even more. If he can keep up his rate of a dunk in every 12 minutes of playing time, well, you do the math, I’ll do the alfredo.
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