How Aaron Holiday is able to have a positive impact on the Pacers

Have you seen Aaron Holiday’s net rating? It is absurdly good. Here is how the Indiana Pacers rookie is able to be so effective.

The 2018 rookie class is historic. That statement would usually be premature halfway into the season but this class is clearly different from the lot. Luka Doncic is a once in a generation type of player: a massive lead guard with preternatural touch and elite offensive gifts. Jaren Jackson Jr. is the next in line of unicorn super freaks, with his size, defensive prowess, and flashes of offensive creation ability. DeAndre Ayton is a highly productive big and Wendell Carter has shown serious flashes in an abysmal situation. The list goes on.

One player that is talked about less than he should, as you can probably guess by the title of the article and the website this is published on, is Justin, I mean Jrue, I mean Aaron Holiday. Aaron Holiday’s rookie season has gone about according to plan, if not a tad ahead of schedule. He’s playing 12.4 minutes per game and doesn’t appear in every game.

However, what we could not have seen coming is Aaron Holiday’s unfeasible positive impact on the Pacers. When Aaron Holiday is on the court, the Pacers are markedly better than when he is off. Advanced metrics love Aaron Holiday, probably a bit too much – Holiday is that hot girl that breaks hearts as she pleases and the advanced metrics are the depressed, nerdy kid who can’t relinquish his crush for this unattainable fantasy – and we’ll get into this fact shortly.

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It’s easy to dismiss the metrics as illegitimate and misrepresentative of Holiday as a player. Holiday’s per game stats of 6.0 points, 1.6 assists, and 1.8 rebounds are fine but nothing earth-shattering. After all, it is clear Holiday is not one of the top rookies in the league despite what any fancy number might say.

Notice how I used the word ‘unfeasible’ in regarding the impact of Holiday on the team. And, spoiler alert, the skeptics are right here. Aaron Holiday is good but he’s not best rookie in the league good. We’ll get to the numbers in a bit but Holiday’s impact, which is the factor these metrics measure, is overblown. However, the metrics used in conjunction with a magical concept called ‘context’ paint a picture which depicts Holiday as an important cog in a highly efficient machine that is the Pacers’ bench.

Like I said before, advanced metrics adore Aaron Holiday. Getting the nerdy stuff out of the way, he ranks first among rookies in Jacob Goldstein’s Player Impact Plus Minus metric (+1.07), fourth in Defensive Player Impact Plus Minus (+0.90), and second in Offensive Player Impact Plus Minus (+0.17). Aside from Ryan Broekhoff, who has only played 80 minutes on the season, Holiday is the only rookie in the NBA with a positive PIPM offensively and defensively. Holiday’s +1.07 PIPM ranks 81st overall. ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus doesn’t value Holiday as highly as PIPM. His RPM is -1.00, which ranks sixth among rookies, behind Doncic, Jackson, Ayton, Mitchell Robinson, and Mikal Bridges. All things considered, that is very good.

Among rookies who have played 10 minutes or more per game, Holiday ranks second in net rating at 11.8, second to Milwaukee’s Donte DiVincenzo. What these statistics do well is projecting which players exhibit a positive impact towards their teams. It is rare for rookies to make a positive impact on winning, especially at the rate Holiday supposedly is. Although Holiday’s absurdly high PIPM and net rating and considerably high RPM rate Holiday highly, these metrics are not a measure of ability, rather of impact. And although Holiday does absolutely have a positive impact on winning, it is less prominent than the numbers suggest, largely due to circumstance.

Looking at the Pacers’ on-off splits, Holiday, again, stands out. Excluding Ike Anigbogu and Davon Reed, the difference between Holiday’s net rating when he is on the floor (11.6) versus when he is off the floor (5.4) is the greatest difference on the Pacers (6.2). Despite Holiday’s inherent goodness as a player, the main reason for this drastic disparity is beyond himself: the Pacers’ bench is an incredible force.

The lineup Aaron Holiday most often plays in is the Pacers’ fifth most played lineup at 75 total minutes: Holiday, Cory Joseph, Doug McDermott, Thaddeus Young, and Domantas Sabonis, a unit with four bench players and Young. This lineup, setting minimum requirements at 10 games played, has the fourth highest net rating of any Pacers’ five-man lineup at +19.8.

The Pacers drafted Aaron Holiday into an ideal situation. He is elevated by the players around him and his quick development is a product of his environment. Playing limited minutes, often at the end of games and almost always against second units, Holiday’s metrics are coincidentally high and a product of the rest of his teammates thriving. However, dismissing those metrics dilutes the fact that Holiday is having a quietly special rookie season.

The Pacers are the best defensive team in the NBA and, despite all of the criticism he gets, Nate McMillan is a virtuoso when it comes to defensive game planning and development. He has turned dad bod Bogey into a more than serviceable NBA defender and has had Holiday make significant strides from his college years.

At 6’1″ with a 6’7′” wingspan, Holiday has the size to be a functional positional defender. He is still learning how to play team defense, as most rookies are, but has a decent understanding of weak-side rotations and offensive concepts. The Pacers defend one of the most effective actions in the NBA, a Spain pick and roll, effectively here. Holiday, defending the player who sets a back screen on the roll man’s defender, knows to execute a switch with Joseph to negate the advantage created by the action. Despite the questionable foul call, Holiday does a good job here:

Holiday knows how to use his length as a deterrent and as a supplement to his smaller stature. He has the quickness to stay in front of most guards, using his frame to stymie drives:

On offense, Holiday is an effective secondary creator, which is something not many rookies can say. Maneuvering in the pick and roll, Holiday handles the ball well, getting to his spots and knocking down pull up jumpers. The pull-up jumper, specifically the pull-up 3, is one of the most valuable skills in modern basketball and Holiday is already comfortable in this area, shooting 14-31 (45.2%) on pull-up jumpers:

Holiday’s decision making is generally good and he has solid timing on his passes to find open teammates:

Plays like this aren’t where Holiday’s value is but they are exciting to watch and help fire up the team:

Aaron Holiday is not one of the best few rookies in the league. He isn’t right now and he likely will never be, given the quality of this rookie class.

However, the decidedly positive impact that Holiday has on the Pacers is an auspicious sign of future growth. On the development curve, Holiday is exceeding expectations by all metrics. Assuming the Indiana Pacers continue to play like one of the best teams in the NBA, Aaron Holiday won’t see an expanded role, no matter how well he plays. But if an injury happens or some other situation occurs where Holiday receives more playing time, we could see him blossom into a truly valuable point guard, and one more reflective of his numbers.