Denver Nuggets Rookie DaRon Holmes II Tears Achilles in Summer League Debut

22-year-old Denver Nuggets rookie power forward/center DaRon Holmes II, selected with the No. 22 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft out of Dayton, has torn his right Achilles tendon, and is likely to miss all of the 2024-25 season, sources inform Shams Charania of The Athletic.

In what will now be his one and only Summer League contest of 2024, an 88-78 loss to the L.A. Clippers on Friday night at the Pavilion in Las Vegas, the 6-foot-10 consensus All-American Second-Teamer and two-time All-Atlantic First-Teamer manned the middle, scoring 11 points on 4-of-8 shooting from the field (3-of-3 from beyond the arc), seven rebounds, one assist, and one steal across 25:43 of action.

Holmes was the Nuggets’ top pick in the draft, after they swapped selections with the Phoenix Suns — who in turn acquired the draft rights for Virginia small forward Ryan Dunn with what been Denver’s No. 28 pick.

The Nuggets have now let three of the top seven players on their 2023 championship team walk in free agency.

The loss of veterans Bruce Brown (who signed a two-year, $45 million contract with the Indiana Pacers in 2023, and was eventually flipped to the Toronto Raptors midway through the season), Jeff Green (who inked a two-season, $16 million deal with the Houston Rockets last summer) and most recently Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (who agreed to a three-year, $66 million contract with the Orlando Magic) seems to be leveling the playing field a bit in the West, somewhat muting Denver’s excellence. The team absolutely needs to hit on young new players in the draft, who can be kept under long-term team control while signed to rookie-scale contracts.

Last year, without Brown or Green shoring up their depth off the bench, Denver faltered, losing to the jumbo-sized Minnesota Timberwolves in a seven-game second round playoff series this past spring. Now, the team is losing a title-winning starter in Caldwell-Pope, who will add his floor-spacing and perimeter defense to a frisky young playoff club in the Eastern Conference. Swingman Christian Braun, Denver’s eighth man during its championship season as a rookie, is expected to replace Caldwell-Pope in the backcourt, alongside star point guard Jamal Murray.

Braun is the kind of developmental success story (still on his rookie-scale contract) that Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth surely has wanted to replicate these last two seasons in the draft: a seasoned, NBA-ready college player who can contribute to a winning effort right away. At 22, Holmes seemed likely to do just that. Unfortunately, he’ll have to likely wait a year, as he recuperates from one of the most devastating injuries possible in the NBA.

With Holmes gone, Booth is presumably now hoping young additions like Peyton Watson (the No. 30 pick out of UCLA in 2022) and second-year players Julian Strawther (the No. 29 pick out of Gonzaga in 2023), Jalen Pickett (the No. 32 selection out of Penn State in 2023) and Hunter Tyson (the No. 37 selection out of Clemson in 2023) can finally step up.