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2024 Free Agents - Justin Holiday

Summary
During a two and a half season stretch for the Pacers from 2019-2022, Holiday shot really well, hitting 39% from three on over a thousand attempts. However, he has not shot that well for the remainder of his career, including hitting only 34% from three after being traded to Sacramento in 2022, and only 31% in '22-'23. For his career, he's about an average shooter at 36%, but I think Holiday has to hit close to 40% to be a valuable rotation-level player on a good team. To his credit, he did that in '23-'24 for the Nuggets, hitting 41%. 

Holiday is not much of a creator on offense, as the majority of his shot attempts come from spot-up situations. He has never had a season since his rookie season in which more than 13% of his makes were unassisted, according to Cleaning the Glass. The vast majority of his attempts come from three, which is probably good because he doesn't finish well at the rim or shoot very well from midrange.

Defensively, Holiday has good size and length for a wing at 6'6". He usually has above-average steal and block rates for his position also. However, he is thin and is likely to get overmatched against some of the bigger, stronger wings. 

Holiday will be 35 years old as a free agent in 2024, and has already started to fall back onto the fringes of NBA rotations. He will most likely be on minimum contracts going forward, but if he can hit enough shots from outside, he should be able to extend his career. He got more minutes than I expected in '23-'24, and even some playoff minutes.
 
Cap Considerations
Holiday will be an unrestricted free agent with a $2.1 million cap hold and Non-Bird Rights. This means that the highest starting salary the Nuggets could offer him using the Non-Bird Exception is $4 million. This should be enough to retain Holiday, since he settled for the minimum of $3.2 million to come to Denver. Alternatively, the Nuggets could use their Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception (if available) to re-sign Holiday if he demands more than $4 million. 

Other teams will have multiple ways to sign Holiday as even teams without cap space could possibly use any of the Non-Taxpayer MLE, Room MLE, Taxpayer MLE, or Bi-Annual Exception to sign him. It's also likely that Holiday only gets minimum offers, and may not even get fully-guaranteed offers.

Potential Teams: Nuggets, Lakers, Bucks, Celtics, 76ers

Predicted Contract: 1-year, $3.3 million ($2.1 million cap hit) with the Nuggets

Last updated: 6/9/2024

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