Ron Holland II’s Summer League performance has Pistons fans thinking about a big leap next season, but before Holland can reach his considerable potential, he has to be more consistent on both ends.
Holland was a surprise contributor as a teenager and one of the youngest players in the draft and was able to carve out a meaningful role for himself in his rookie season. He has the talent to build upon that, and people tend to forget that he was rated as the best player in his class coming out of high school by plenty of draft experts.
Holland can defend and cares about it, giving max effort when he’s on the floor, sometimes to his detriment. We know he’s very athletic, quick for his height (I always forget he’s 6-foot-8) and can attack the rim.
He showed flashes of all of those things in Summer League to go along with an improved 3-point shot, though the sample size is small. The talent is there, but like all young players, Holland just needs to do it consistently, and there are two specific areas in which he needs to improve.
Ron Holland needs to stop fouling so much
Holland is disruptive on the defensive end but needs to be better about not picking up silly fouls 75 feet away from the hoop, which he did several times in the playoffs.
You don’t want to take away from his aggressiveness, as that is part of what makes Holland a good defender, but he has to get consistently better at doing it without fouling, which is certainly a tough ask of a young player.
If you look at Holland’s least impactful games last season, they were almost all games in which he picked up quick fouls that sent him back to the bench and limited his minutes.
That was fine last season, when Holland was essentially being unleashed as an all-out effort guy who was only expected to play a maximum of 15 minutes, but if he is going to claim a larger role next season, he has to pick his spots and be able to stay on the floor.
Holland has to avoid the long droughts
It’s clear that Holland needs to become a more consistent 3-point shooter after hitting just 23.8 percent of them last season.
He doesn’t need to become a prolific shooter by any means, but if he could take around three a night and make one of them, it would be a big improvement from last season.
He also has to avoid the long droughts when he doesn’t make any at all, which happened several times last season, including 17 games from the end of February to the latter stages of March where he didn’t make a single 3-point shot.
The full two-way game is there for Ron Holland, all he has to do is get more consistent with it and hopefully we’ve seen the first signs of that in Summer League.