Indiana Pacers: 2018 NBA Draft grades

No. 23: Aaron Holiday, UCLA

It’s tough to imagine the Pacers were anything less than ecstatic when the latest Holiday brother fell to them with the 23rd pick.

A little earlier, the main concern of Indiana fans was that the team would select a young man who seemed tailor-made to play his professional basketball in the Hoosier State — a fear that was soon alleviated:

With no Grayson Allen on the board, the decision became pretty obvious, if it wasn’t already. The Pacers took Aaron Holiday, the first point guard off the board after the vaunted lottery trio of Young, Collin Sexton and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

With a fellow UCLA alum in perfectly fine but unspectacular Darren Collison (his legal name, by the way) currently holding down ball-handling duties, it only made sense to try and find an eventual replacement. One man who sounded very happy was the guy who’ll soon be coaching him:

It’s rare that any team can find a starter at such a key position outside the lottery, let alone in the mid-20s. Holiday has a great chance to be just that. If he were a few inches taller, he’d have been an easy lottery pick, and with a year to marinate and learn from Collison, he should be ready to step into a bigger role by 2019 — if not sooner.

Grade: A-