DARKO has him as valuable as Dame, to start. RAPTOR has him as nearly as good. I just don't see him as a top 10-15 player. He has been objectively awful in the playoffs. He got totally cooked against the Heat last year. His defense is clearly in decline.
He's good, but not two first round picks, a good starter, and the 6moy winner in a trade good.
There's so much variance to how Holiday is ranked as a player, it doesn't surprise me the lack of consensus around this trade. Advanced stats have him as a top 15 guy or better, but most informal rankings have him in the mid-high 30s. If you buy the top-15-to-20 framing, then you make this trade every time: the commodity of top-tier talents who don't demand top billing is incredibly scarce, and adding one of them to your two-star nucleus is the best thing you can possibly do to improve your roster.Holiday's career trajectory by DARKO is almost unbelievable. He was the highest ranking guard last year (just ahead of Curry).
Hard to argue with the results:
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I've tended to see Holiday more like a 10-15% upgrade on Marcus Smart, and at that valuation, he's not worth two rotation players and two picks. But I'm happily poised to be proven wrong.
One thing I do really like about the trade is that, while I was as happy as everyone else to witness White's emergence last season, it felt we were being hasty in pencilling him in as starting PG for a championship team. I could easily see him struggling / regressing a bit under those expectations, and that scenario + grumpy/injured Brogdon would leave us very thin in the backcourt and fragile in the leadership-and-toughness department. Now, the C's have easily the best guards + wings situation in the league, not only in terms of talent but also makeup.
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