Justin Holmes brings football, basketball skills to Gryphons lineup

The Gryphons are built to win the kind of possessions that change SlamBall games. Justin Holmes brings receiver speed, basketball touch, and track-school body control into a lineup that already leans physical, while Kyshawn Jones and Connor Hollenbeck add the kind of multi-sport toughness that turns loose balls, wall battles, and rim attacks into points. That mix is why the Gryphons are such a tricky matchup: they can beat you with size, but they can also beat you with timing.

What makes the Gryphons different

SlamBall was invented in 1999 by Mason Gordon and first played in Los Angeles, and the league’s modern version only sharpened the value of players who can absorb contact without losing coordination. When SlamBall returned in 2023, it did so with an eight-team field in Las Vegas at Cox Pavilion, an ESPN audience, and an $11 million Series A round behind it. The Gryphons were not assembled by accident in that environment. They were drafted like a team meant to play above the rim and through the walls.

That matters because SlamBall is not just basketball with trampolines. Gordon has described it as a hybrid of basketball, football, hockey, and trampoline action, and the best lineups are the ones that can survive the collisions without losing their offensive rhythm. The Gryphons’ roster construction suggests exactly that: football backgrounds for contact, basketball skill for finishing, and track experience for balance and air awareness.

Justin Holmes is the skill bridge

Justin Holmes is the clearest example of why the Gryphons can be so annoying to guard. SlamBall lists him as a first-round pick and a team captain, and his football résumé is the kind that translates cleanly into a sport that rewards body control and spatial awareness. He had 120 catches for 1,891 yards and 25 touchdowns at Oakmont High School, then put up 99 catches for 1,192 yards and five scores over four seasons at San Jose State.

The bigger clue is the way he moved around the field. Holmes also lettered in basketball and ran hurdles and jumps on the track team, and that combination shows up in SlamBall as clean landings, strong balance off the walls, and a feel for when to rise rather than crash. He had a catch in 20 consecutive games from late 2015 through the third game of 2017, which tells you he was not just a splash-play receiver but a steady one. In SlamBall terms, that reliability matters when the game gets sped up and the defense is trying to turn every touch into a turnover.

Holmes’ path after college only reinforces the profile. He attended a private workout with the San Francisco 49ers in 2019 and later signed with the Iowa Barnstormers, showing the kind of athletic versatility that keeps him useful in multiple settings. He also works as a healthcare recruiter while running Game Changer Gear, which sounds like a side detail until you realize it fits the same theme: he is used to balancing demands and still producing.

Why Holmes changes the floor

For the Gryphons, Holmes is not just a name on the roster. He is the player who helps make the team’s physicality usable on offense. When a roster has a receiver’s hands, a basketball player’s touch, and a hurdler’s control, it can pressure the rim without looking rushed. That is the value in a league where possession chains are short and a single bad landing can kill a possession.

San Jose State’s roster page called Holmes a top returning receiver in his senior season and listed him with 36 games played and 18 starts. That kind of usage matters in SlamBall because it points to a player who understands timing and workload. If the Gryphons need a steady possession ender in the dunk zone or a quick burst in transition, Holmes is the one who makes the play feel organized instead of chaotic.

Adam Stanford gives the lineup structure

Adam Stanford is the stabilizer. He played three seasons at Kentucky Wesleyan under Happy Osbourne, then transferred to Campbellsville for the 2017-18 season and averaged 7.3 points per game while shooting 51 percent from the field. That is not flashy on paper, but it is exactly the kind of efficient wing production that keeps a SlamBall team from living and dying on chaos.

His academic profile says a lot about how he fits this roster too. Campbellsville says Stanford graduated with a bachelor’s degree in graphic arts and a minor in communications, while his SlamBall bio notes further study in sport management and academic honors. That reads like the kind of disciplined player who knows spacing, timing, and roles. In a league built on live substitutions and constant motion, a wing who can stay organized is more valuable than he looks.

Kyshawn Jones brings the burst

If Holmes gives the Gryphons polish, Kyshawn Jones gives them violence with control. SlamBall lists him at 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, with a March 1, 1995 birthdate, and his background at George Washington High in Danville, Virginia includes varsity letters in basketball, football, and track. That is the exact multi-sport blend SlamBall keeps rewarding, because it creates a player who can run, absorb contact, and still finish on the move.

Jones was the Gryphons’ scoring engine in 2023 with 261 points, which tells you the offense runs through his ability to turn athletic advantages into repeated damage. In a game where transition bursts can swing momentum in seconds, that kind of production is what makes a defense sag. If Jones gets downhill early, the rest of the floor opens for Holmes and Stanford to attack cleaner looks.

Connor Hollenbeck makes the messy plays useful

Connor Hollenbeck is the roster’s utility knife. At Edinboro in 2014, he played wide receiver and punter, caught 11 passes for 117 yards, and punted 28 times with a team-leading 33.0-yard average. He also added a touchdown catch, which is another reminder that the Gryphons are not afraid to use players who can solve more than one problem at once.

That versatility matters in SlamBall because the sport constantly asks players to defend in space, recover after collisions, and switch from one job to another without a pause. Hollenbeck’s background says he is comfortable with that kind of ambiguity. Even if his 2023 scoring line was just 3 points, his value is bigger than the box score. He helps make the rest of the roster more functional when the pace gets ugly.

The 2023 build explains the record

The draft tells the story as clearly as the roster. Justin Holmes went in Round 1, Connor Hollenbeck in Round 2, Kyshawn Jones in Round 3, Jordan Grant in Round 4, Darion Slade in Round 5, and Adam Stanford in Round 6. That is not a random pile of athletes. It is a layered construction project built around size, burst, and cross-sport feel.

The results were uneven but instructive. The Gryphons finished 4-9 and scored 628 points, with Jones leading the way at 261, Holmes adding 156, Stanford contributing 89, and Hollenbeck scoring 3. That distribution says the template worked enough to create offense, but not enough to make the team easy to trust possession after possession. Still, the blueprint is obvious: if the Gryphons are going to swing an upcoming game against a contender, it will be by forcing the issue in the paint, winning the rebound battle, and turning their football-built bodies into clean dunk-zone chances before the defense can reset.

That is why this team is hard to defend. The Gryphons do not need every possession to look pretty. They just need a few more of the ugly ones, and their roster is built to make those ugly ones belong to them.