The NBA draft is almost always a game of luck after the top five or so picks. What are the chances the Indiana Pacers get lucky with Aaron Holiday?
When the Indiana Pacers selected Aaron Holiday with the 20th pick in the 2018 NBA draft, most of the reactions were positive.
He can already shoot the ball effectively, he’s played with two Pacers before while playing at UCLA, he fills a position of future need, and he is a solid overall dude. He has an NBA skill and seamlessly fits in with the team. That’s a great pick on paper.
Unfortunately, that’s not quite how the NBA draft works. Most of the time, after the first few picks, getting the perfect player for your organization is a product of fit, coaching, talent, and luck.
Fortunately for the Indiana Pacers, coaching is a non-issue. Indiana has a stellar track record of player development and has produced over 1/4 of all NBA Most Improved players since 2000. That’s not a fluke.
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The fit portion we already discussed. It is solid. Luck is impossible to guestimate, so we will skip over that.
Given all this, all that’s left to consider for Aaron Holiday’s future as a good NBA player is the most important piece of the draft pie: talent. Can he play an effective role on a winning basketball team?
Let’s examine.
Most NBA players who contribute to winning basketball fall into one of two categories: elite at one skill or good at a handful of skills. The more skills you are really good at, the closer to stardom you become.
Guys like Kyle Korver show that having one elite skill can make you a useful player in just about any situation. His shooting lit up the Pacers in the playoffs. The same can be said about Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and his defense. Sometimes one crème de la crème skill is all it takes.
For Aaron Holiday, his shooting could be enough for him to be a winning contributor no matter what else happens with his career. Keyword: could.
His three-point shot was a beautiful weapon for him at UCLA. He canned over 40 percent of his shots from deep all three seasons he played, a great figure that indicates a solid shooter.
His form is clean, and his release is the same every time. A repeatable action leads to a repeatable result:
But other studies show that a more effective way to translate college shooting stats to NBA shooting is to do a blend of three-point shooting and free throw shooting. While a stellar three-point shooter on a decent chunk of attempts in college, Holiday was a solid-but-not-great 79% free throw shooter in the NCAA. Is that good enough? Yep. Is that elite? Nope. That matters and suggests that he may not be as elite as we are expecting with his shooting stroke.
Don’t take that as me saying Holiday will be a bad shooter. He projects to be a good or even great shooter from the outside. But the caveat for effective one trick ponies is elite, and I’m not sure Holiday will ever reach 2017-18 Darren Collison levels of shooting. He could, but it is an improbable scenario.
This means Holiday will need to be effective in other aspects of the sport to positively impact winning basketball. What areas those could be aren’t exactly clear. Typically, the important skills for point guards are defense, ball-handling, and passing, so those are all worth examining.
Some fans have clamored that Holiday is a great defender. He has active hands and snagged over a steal per game in college, and his final season at UCLA ended with him making an All-defensive team in the Pac-12. I can see why people think Holiday is a good defender.
But spoiler, making an all-defense team in the Pac-12, pardon my French, ain’t sh*t. His defensive box plus-minus, albeit a flawed stat, suggested that he was actually a negative (-.1) on the defensive end of the floor in his all-defense season. He is not nearly as good as the narrative says on that end of the floor.
Additionally, in college, you can get past your physical limitations by being more talented than your opposition. In the NBA, that is much harder since the talent bar is raised by so much. Holiday is six feet tall according to combine measurements, which means he is probably shorter than that. That’s really short in by NBA standards and is going to make life taxing for him on the court. This isn’t in the pros, but watch how much his height hinders him on defense here, as he gets destroyed by a screen (twice) and can’t slow down any of the action(s):
He won’t be able to gamble on passing lanes, reaching-in will be impossible, and contesting shots will require a perfectly timed close out and jump. Being short in the NBA is a bigger obstacle than putting socks on after a shower.
Long story short, playing defense will not be something that Holiday can rely on as a positive skill long term. He could get to a point where he is passable on the less glamorous end of the floor, but name one short point guard who is a plus defender? Outside of Chris Paul, a Hall of Famer, there are not many. It’s going to be an uphill battle, and it isn’t likely to be the area of impact that turns him into a useful player.
Holiday’s ball-handling is encouraging, though. Successful dribbling is a harder to quantify stat – you just have to see it. He’s quick and shifty with the rock in his hands, he could weave his way around just about anyone who tried to guard him in college.
In Summer League, he saw similar results, weaving his way around defenders with ease on his way to wherever he was trying to get. On the break here, he just beats everybody while handling the ball, and it opens up a passing line for an easy dime to Travis Leslie:
That’s some mean speed with the ball, a skill that is very hard to teach. If Holiday can reach a high level of ball handling, he could be a shot creator for his teammates, and that could be the skill that allows him to be effective.
But there’s a flip side to that – he’s a turnover machine:
Holiday drives recklessly and aimlessly, the worst combination of adverbs. Cut off near the rim, instead of resetting, Holiday leaves his feet without having a clue where his open teammates are. He’s forced to cough it up in the air, and he hands it right to the defense.
The fact that Aaron Holiday chose to drive with the big man hedging that high was a solid indicator of his confidence at that particular moment. He wasn’t afraid to take it into the teeth of the D, and he was having an excellent game at that point in time. You want him to be attacking in those mental situations. But that particular decision and result are indicative of a larger problem that Holiday has coughing-up the ball thanks to poor decision making.
It happened in summer league, too. He tumbled past anyone else on the Pacers with 5.5 turnovers per game, a less than ideal number for anyone, even for a guy who had the ball in his hands a ton.
We’ve seen him be both good and bad with the ball in his hands. With some improved decision making, this could be another skill that helps him be an effective basketball player. But if some of his reckless habits don’t subside, Holiday could end up in a (present day) Brandon Jennings-like position; a quality ball handler and playmaker who turns it over far too often. That can still be useful, but it’s harder.
Speaking of playmaking, let’s look at Holidays passing. Some of his aforementioned turnovers came from aggressive passing, but as a whole Holiday is a crisp set-up man. He dished out nearly six assists per game at UCLA, and in summer league he passed it to a scoring teammate nearly seven times per game.
He understands where his partners are going to be, and he is deft at delivering them the ball at the appropriate time. In summer league, he showed this time and time again:
In college, he displayed some court vision beyond his years:
Passing is probably going to be Aaron Holiday’s second most effective skill. Because he is so quick and shifty, he will be able to open up passing lanes for his fellow hoopers very seamlessly. Leveraging those passing lanes into constructive plays – an accurate dime or a great fake – could allow Holiday to be a two-level player as a shooter and passer, perhaps not much different than Darren Collison this past season.
The challenge for Holiday will be figuring out how to mature as a player. Does he put all of his eggs into one basket and attempt to become an elite shooter? Or does he foray into an area that would allow him to become competent at some other skills at the expense of becoming a knockdown outside threat? The path he chooses will influence his development a great deal.
What it might come down to for Aaron Holiday in terms of effectiveness is this: can he cut down the turnovers? It’s clear he can shoot and pass. But his defense is going to be bad for a while. If he can chop away some turnovers, that would give him more chances to have his offense outweigh his defense, and that could make all the difference in his effectiveness.
Personally, I am skeptical that Holiday can become more than a slight positive overall. High turnover guys rarely have a positive impact (see also: Stephenson, Lance) and bad defenders require a certain group of talent to make them effective. Sure, Holiday could end up being neither of those things. But he could be both, and that is a scary thought.
With rookies, most of the analysis you see is educated guessing. This article is no different. Aaron Holiday could be a completely different player in the NBA than the version of him we have seen so far, and all of these points could be moot. He could end up a superstar, remember that luck factor I mentioned at the beginning? That is not impossible. If that happens, then I look dumb, and you can all make fun of me.
Holiday is probably going to be a fine scorer of the basketball. That is going to absolve him from ever being called a bust for the Indiana Pacers, and for a guy picked 20th, that will be just fine. But if he can’t develop his skills in some other key areas, then he may never truly be an effective player. Like all rookies, give him a few seasons, but it could be a tough battle for the Indiana Pacers newest draft pick. For now, we wait and see.