A familiar comparison is emerging for Ron Holland and he needs to break from it now

Ron Holland II was a high draft pick who came into the league as one of the youngest players in his class, a raw prospect with defensive skill and versatility who has offered little on the offensive end so far. 

If that sounds familiar, it’s because you could have said all of the same things about former Pistons’ draft pick Stanley Johnson at the same point in his career. Like Holland, Johnson entered the NBA as a teenager with a ton of promise to be the two-way wing the Pistons have been looking for since I can remember. 

Both guys came into the league with plus athleticism, the ability to defend several positions, and both ended up getting playoff reps on good teams, though Holland’s teams were better than the ones Stanley played on.

Johnson and Holland both struggled to shoot the 3-ball in their first two seasons, but Stanley was actually better, shooting 30.7 and 29 percent, with Holland only shooting 23 and 25 percent in his first years in the league. 

Johnson was meant to be the Pistons’ two-way savior but instead had a journeyman’s career that never lived up to the expectations or hype. If Ron Holland doesn’t want to join him, he needs to diverge from this comparison immediately. 

Ron Holland II has to develop an offensive game aside from running 

Holland has been an even worse shooter than Stanley Johnson was, and that’s a frightening sentence to write. The good news is that Holland is only 20 and the two of them are not the same human, so he still has plenty of time to write a different story. 

Stanley Johnson was a very good defensive player who was marking LeBron as a rookie, but he never improved on the offensive end. Johnson shot under 40 percent for his career and under 30 percent from 3-point range for most of it. 

We just kept waiting for it to happen, but it never did, and we have to hope that isn’t the case with Holland. 

Holland scored the majority of his points in transition this season and still only shot 43 percent from the floor, a dip from the 47 percent he shot as a rookie. There was hope in his 3-point shot at the end of the season, when he was starting to shoot it confidently, but he still only shot 25 percent overall and just 24.4 percent on corner 3’s, which is an area he absolutely has to improve. 

Holland is an impactful player on the defensive end, but so was Johnson, though I do think Holland offers more intangibles.  At some point the offense has to at least catch up. Holland still has time to prove himself, but the clock is ticking as he enters his third season with big expectations. 

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