{"id":318980,"date":"2025-10-03T09:50:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T09:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/318980\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T09:50:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T09:50:21","slug":"rockets-2025-2026-nba-player-previews-aaron-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/318980\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockets 2025-2026 NBA player previews: Aaron Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Aaron Holiday was the Houston Rockets\u2019 last free agent signing in 2023, which typically indicates a looming minimal role for a player. Much like Josh Okogie, who was the Rockets\u2019 final signing this summer, who isn\u2019t expected to garner much playing time this season.<br \/>Holiday was brought in at the request of Rockets coach Ime Udoka, who was tasked with adding proven veterans to a Rockets team, at the time, that largely mirrored an AAU team.<br \/>Along with Fred VanVleet, Dillon Brooks, and Jeff Green that same summer&#8211; two of which have championship experience.<br \/>Holiday has operated as an emergency option, playing spot minutes when players have rested on back-to-backs or in blowouts, when the games have largely been decided. Or in the case of an injury to starting point guard Fred VanVleet.<br \/>Which, brings me to my next point.<br \/>VanVleet\u2019s fateful ACL injury has left the Rockets largely without answers. They don\u2019t quite have the ability to add an external body.<br \/>They don\u2019t have any vacant roster spots and are $1.2 million away from being hard-capped, which isn\u2019t quite enough to offer the vet minimum. The only other point guards on the roster are Reed Sheppard and Holiday.<br \/>Sheppard is in line for an increased role &#8212; we\u2019ve heard it all summer. Amen Thompson will log a significant amount of minutes at the point, along with the wing, as he\u2019s been mainly used to this point.<br \/>They can\u2019t get all of the point guard minutes.<br \/>Holiday will play quite a bit more than the 12.8 minutes that he received last season.<br \/>He\u2019s a proven three-point shooter at the NBA level. In fact, he and VanVleet were the Rockets\u2019 best shooters last season, at 39.8 percent from three, albeit on a low number of attempts (2.9). The year before, in his debut season with the Rockets, he made 38.7 percent of his long-range attempts (2.8).<br \/>The Rockets ranked in the bottom ten in long-range shooting and failed to add experienced three-point specialists, relying instead on organic growth and improvement. Holiday\u2019s shooting could help soften the blow of the absence of VanVleet\u2019s three-point shooting.<br \/>Yes, I know, they are very different players. Holiday doesn\u2019t have VanVleet\u2019s playmaking chops.<br \/>At all.<br \/>In fact, he\u2019s typically not looking to get his teammates involved, rather seeking to score. But on a team devoid of shooting, his fringe 40 percent from three might prove beneficial in an increased role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Holiday was the Houston Rockets\u2019 last free agent signing in 2023, which typically indicates a looming minimal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211,50495],"class_list":{"0":"post-318980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-rockets","14":"tag-rockets-training-camp-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115309617487531873","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}