Rockets to re-sign former first-round pick

Houston Rockets guard Aaron Holiday.

The Rockets and veteran guard Aaron Holiday have struck a new deal, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, who reports that Holiday is signing a two-year, $10M contract to remain in Houston.

The younger brother of fellow NBA players Jrue Holiday and Justin Holiday, Aaron played a regular rotation role off the bench in Houston last season, averaging 6.6 points, 1.8 assists and 1.6 rebounds in 16.3 minutes per game across 78 appearances. He posted a solid shooting line of .446/.387/.921.

After spending his first three NBA seasons in Indiana, Holiday has bounced around the league in recent years, spending time in Washington, Phoenix and Atlanta in addition to Houston. This will be the first time since his Pacers days that the 27-year-old will return to a team for a second season.

Because he signed as a free agent with the Rockets last season, Holiday only has Non-Bird rights this summer, meaning the team can’t give him a deal worth more than 20 percent above the veteran’s minimum without using a different exception. As a result, it looks like Houston will have to dip into its mid-level exception or bi-annual exception to complete the signing.

Using the non-taxpayer MLE to sign Holiday to a starting salary worth a little less than $5M would leave the Rockets with about $8M of that exception left over. Using the bi-annual exception would result in a maximum two-year total of about $9.57M for Holiday and would leave the MLE untouched.

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