2. Aaron Holiday
Aaron Holiday played high school basketball at Campbell Hall in Studio City and played collegiately at UCLA. There is no doubt that as a minimum free agent, he would have signed with the Los Angeles Lakers to come home over the Atlanta Hawks. The Lakers had all the leverage for Holiday and did nothing with it.
Holiday was traded from the Washington Wizards to the Phoenix Suns last season and wound up being a promising bench player for Phoenix. While that was not enough to get him paid more than the league minimum, it was enough to spark the interest of contending teams like the Hawks.
That strong play has translated into the 2022-23 season as well. Holiday has averaged 5.5 points, 2.0 assists and 1.2 rebounds in 19.6 minutes per game. Those numbers don’t jump off the page but he is shooting a staggering 63.6% from three (career 37.7% shooter from beyond the arc) and also has been above average defensively.
The Lakers are crowded at point guard, sure, but Holiday could have done the same things that Patrick Beverley is going defensively while adding more of an offensive impact. While the Beverley trade looked genius at the time, imagine if the Lakers instead flipped Talen Horton-Tucker for a wing like Josh Richardson and had Holiday instead of Beverley. The team would be better as a whole.
But that would have been too easy for the Lakers to do. Heck, back in the summer we even highlighted that the team would regret not signing Holiday. Why bring the hometown kid back to LA when he has a skillset you need?