I am really trying hard to find some justification for not straight-up anointing Richaun Holmes as the Kings best player right now. I’m seriously about to anoint him right here, right now, as the Kings best player, and unless someone comes in with some evidence that he’s not, it’s happening.
Advanced stats notoriously love low-volume efficient bigmen, so I’m willing to throw out stuff like PER (highest on the team by far) and Win Shares (highest on the team by far) while making my argument for Holmes being the best player on the Kings. I can afford to throw those things out, because there’s still a mountain of evidence in his favor.
Similarly, at this stage in the season, ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus, an even more advanced stat, is kind of noisy and not perfect. So I won’t use it in my argument. But just for fun: Holmes ranks 30th in that stat in the league, out of all players (he’s beaten out by Chris Chiozza though, and that dude just got waived, casting even more doubt on this stat). The next Kings player is Bogdan Bogdanovic at 81st.
Everyone likes to hate on boxscore stats, which is fair. Holmes leads the team in rebounds by far, steals by far, and blocks by far. That’s a factor of his healthiness, a rare trait these days on the Kings, but also a testament to his ability to impact the game on defense. But since these are just raw stats, we can forget about them.
You can look at net rating, or how the Kings do with him on the court versus off the court, if you want more evidence that he’s the Kings’ best player. You wouldn’t want to, because net rating is seriously affected by the quality of a player’s backups (in this case, Dewayne Dedmon, who sucks, or Harry Giles, who sucks even worse), but you could. I won’t. The Kings actually outscore teams with Holmes on the court, and his on-off is off the charts good, but as I said, we don’t want to use these stats either.
I don’t think there are any stats left to analyze, advanced or unadvanced, but looking at the huge pile of stuff we’ve discarded, all of it squarely in Holmes’ favor, I don’t think there is any doubt. He is the Kings best player. No sarcasm. No hyperbole. He just is.