What role will Aaron Holiday play with the Atlanta Hawks

The Atlanta Hawks made a number of moves during the offseason, via trade, the draft, and also in free agency. The Hawks have limited salary cap space so the free agency part has been reasonably quiet with only two players coming to the team this way.

One of these players is Aaron Holiday who was able to sign with the Hawks on the same day that his brother Justin Holiday was traded to the franchise. We asked what is better than one Holiday? Well of course the answer is two Holidays.

Thanks to his size, and the Hawks trading Danilo Gallinari, there is a good chance that Justin Holiday will get decent minutes off the bench. However, the Hawks have a really strong guard rotation, Sharife Cooper was recently waived because of this fact. So, what role will the younger Holiday have with the Hawks this season?

The Atlanta Hawks have an embarrassment of riches at the guard position.

What needs to be considered here is that Holiday signed on with the franchise after they managed to land Murray. This means that he was aware it was going to be a challenge to get decent minutes. Still, the smallest and youngest of the three brothers to play in the league has faced challenges on the court his whole life and is still carving out an NBA career.

The biggest reason for this is his work at the defensive end of the court. Holiday has the quickness to stay in front of most point guards. This is where Nate McMillan is going to use his third-string point guard. That is not to say that his offensive game isn’t also going to be useful.

McMillan has an insight into how to use Holiday having coached him for the first two seasons of the point guard’s career. Holiday has the quickness to break down an offense in order to make a high percentage shot or a good pass. He also showed that he could be an effective player off the ball last season with the Phoenix Suns, making 44.4 percent of his attempts from deep.

While McMillan is going to keep either Murray or Trae Young on the court at all times, Holiday will get a few minutes per quarter alongside Murray as a second ball-handling option. The Hawks also have Bogdan Bogdanovic coming off the bench. However, there is a good chance that he will play more off the ball on the wings rather than the second ball-handling option on the floor.

This will make the Hawks a much harder unit to play against. This second unit has elite defensive ability. With Murray, Holiday, and Bogdanovic on the floor, they also have a tremendous ability to attack the basket through any number of avenues. This is where Holiday’s versatility will help the Atlanta Hawks not allow a defense to settle.