Gryphons lean on Kyshawn Jones and Justin Holmes after 4-9 season

Kyshawn Jones and Justin Holmes are the Gryphons’ pulse, and the box score says so without blinking. Jones finished with 261 points and Holmes with 156, so the two gunners produced 417 of the team’s 628 points in a 4-9 season. If Adam Stanford does not create the first clean look and one of those two does not finish above the rim, the offense can flatten fast.

Jones and Holmes are the load-bearing possessions

The Gryphons’ squad chart is not subtle about how this offense is supposed to work. Stanford, Deshawn Kelly and Jordan Grant handle possessions, Jones, Holmes and Jace Bass are the gunners, and Connor Hollenbeck plus Matthew Wilkerson give the back line its stopping power. That structure points to a team built around one sharp pass, one explosive finish and not much wasted motion.

When Jones gets rolling, the rest of the roster becomes easier to read. He ranked third in the league at 19.7 points per game and was one of only two players with three games of 30 points or more, which is exactly the kind of top-end scoring that keeps a SlamBall team in the fight. Holmes was the cleaner secondary answer, finishing with 12.3 points per game and tying for second in assists per game while converting 15 of 16 offensive face-offs, a rare combination of touch, timing and physical control.

That is why slowing one of the two matters less than shutting off both. Stanford and Kelly can organize possessions, but the raw scoring support behind the top pair drops quickly, with Grant at 30 points, Stanford at 89 and Kelly at 28. On a short clock, a quiet scorer can be covered up. Two quiet scorers leave the Gryphons searching for an answer they do not really have.

The roster has enough size to change shape

The body types on the roster show why this team can look different from matchup to matchup. Holmes is listed at 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds, Hollenbeck at 6-foot-6 and 225, and Wilkerson at 6-foot-7 and 270, a spread that gives the Gryphons room to lean into either guard tempo or a heavier interior style. That matters in SlamBall, where a team that can vary its speed and contact level has a better chance of surviving the league’s burst-scoring swings.

Hollenbeck and Wilkerson are the stoppers, and their job is bigger than defense in the narrow box-score sense. In a sport built on rebounds, rim pressure and violent second chances, stoppers decide whether the pretty stuff at one end actually turns into a run at the other. If they can keep possessions alive and finish them cleanly, Jones and Holmes get more chances to do the damage.

The rest of the rotation tells the same story. Bass gives the Gryphons another gunner, while Stanford, Kelly and Grant keep the ball moving enough to find the right lane or the right matchup. There is real role clarity here, and that is often what separates a functional SlamBall roster from one that just looks busy.

The 4-9 record shows the ceiling and the leak

The full season line, 4-9 with 628 points and a minus-147 differential, explains the problem as plainly as any scouting note could. The Gryphons could score, but not consistently enough to survive nights when the top two were only good instead of overwhelming. In a game with compressed scoring swings, that kind of imbalance usually shows up in the standings fast.

There were flashes that showed how dangerous the group could be when Jones set the tone. He scored 20 points in a 47-45 win over Lava that helped the Gryphons improve to 1-2 early in the season, a reminder that a single elite scorer can swing a game when the margin is that tight. In another stretch, Jones went for 37 points in one game and 29 in another, but the Wrath still beat the Gryphons 70-60, even with Jones and Ty McGee trading dunk for dunk in the main event.

That mix of results is the whole Gryphons story in miniature. They had the scorer who could light up a game, and they had the secondary finisher who could keep the offense from collapsing into a one-man show. What they did not have, most nights, was enough third and fourth scoring to turn those bursts into a record that matched the talent.

The draft and the awards say this was built on purpose

The 2023 draft makes the construction even clearer. Holmes came off the board in Round 1, Hollenbeck in Round 2, Jones in Round 3, Grant in Round 4 and Stanford in Round 6, which looks less like a lucky collection of names and more like a deliberate attempt to stack handlers, gunners and stoppers around a high-usage core. The Gryphons were one of five new franchises in SlamBall’s 2023 relaunch, and they were built with enough experience to compete immediately.

That relaunch opened on ESPN at Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas on July 21, 2023, with eight teams in a month-long season and playoffs. The league later said the season exceeded expectations in social engagement, broadcast interest and attendance, which is part of why Jones and Holmes landing on the All-SlamBall Second Team mattered beyond one roster. Their production gave the Gryphons real visibility inside a league trying to make every marquee possession count.

The cleanest read on this team is still the simplest one: if Stanford gets Jones and Holmes moving into space, the Gryphons have enough firepower to matter. If either scorer gets slowed and the support crew does not pick up the slack, 4-9 looks less like an outlier and more like the shape of the season.