Amid an offseason in which they have made a steady series of solid moves that have allowed them to add to both their future core and their assets war chest, the Washington Wizards also made the decision to waive ten-year NBA veteran big man Richaun Holmes. Now, it seems as though Holmes will be leaving the NBA altogether.
Although nothing has been officially announced yet, multiple reports out of Turkey are adamant that Holmes will be signing with Fenerbahce, the EuroLeague team based in Istanbul who every year are looking to sign NBA talents. If true, Holmes will be joining a lineup already armed with former NBA players Devon Hall, Nicolo Melli and Wade Baldwin IV – and, Fenerbahce hopes, with more still to come.
Financial Motivations, Both In And Out
Holmes was with the Wizards having arrived in February 2024 in a trade with the Dallas Mavericks. He was the financial part of the trade that saw Daniel Gafford move to Dallas, with a 2024 first-round pick attached.
That pick – which ultimately came in at #26 – was used on Dillon Jones. The Wizards later moved that pick with a second-round pick attached in exchange for Kyshawn George, then received Jones back earlier this summer with a different second-round pick attached in a salary dump deal, thus winding up with both George and Jones. As good as Gafford has gone on to be, the Wizards sorely needed multiple prospects, and multiple bites of the cherry to find foundational pieces for the future, which they are hoping they have found with at least one of the two. Anything Holmes could provide was merely a bonus.
Nonetheless, just as he was over his ten-year NBA career, Holmes was decent. Although he sat on the bench for almost all of the first half of the 2024-25 season while the Wizards prioritized court time for Alex Sarr – and while they still had the superior Jonas Valanciunas in the way – Holmes managed to appear in 31 games, mostly in the second half of the season, and averaged 7.4 points and 5.7 rebounds while shooting 64.7% from the field. The numbers very much accorded with his career ones.
Holmes’ Impact Over A Decade
Across his NBA career, Holmes has played the role of productive athletic and energetic first big off the bench. In 489 games with 178 starts, he sported career averages of 8.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 1.0 assists and 0.9 blocks per game, on a highly-efficient career .644 true shooting percentage. Plans to add a three-point shot to his game never quite came to fruition, while foul problems, repeated eye injuries and a lack of favorable defensive situations kept him from ever fully making the next level, yet with his athletic abilities and readily-identifiable eight-foot flip shot things, Holmes made the game fun to watch.
The past tense is used above in anticipation of his stint with the Wizards being the last one of Holmes’s NBA career. Certainly, he seems to have been short of suitors this summer. That said, it does not have to be the case. The EuroLeague-to-NBA pipeline is consistently open, and particularly from Fenerbahce, who earlier this summer saw Nigel Hayes-Davis resume his NBA career after several years away when he joined the Phoenix Suns as a free agent.
If Holmes does indeed join the Turkish giants, as local reports seem to expect that he will, he will be taking over the role vacated by another former Mavericks big, Boban Marjanovic. The Serbian giant left Fener halfway through last season to move to China, creating a vacancy for a potent per-minute machine on the bench who makes the game more fun to watch. Holmes and Marjanovic, of course, do things very differently. But both understand the assignment.
Wizards Lose Veteran Center – To Turkey