Ron Holland’s parents weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea of tackle football. He started flag football when he was 3 years old, but his parents Tarasha and Ron Sr. opted out when the sport transitioned into full contact.
“I think we were skeptical,” Tarasha said, “as an underaged youth.”
Oh, the irony. Here’s how Holland — a Duncanville alum who is expected to become a first-round NBA draft choice on Wednesday — is now described.
“[He has a] willingness to just throw his body around and not care what happens to him,” said Jay Cosme, an assistant basketball coach at Duncanville. “If he’s trying to get a rebound, he wouldn’t care if he jumped up and fell down and broke something in his back. He’s going to go fly 100 miles per hour.”
Or, like this.
“He’s a little crazy,” Duncanville coach David Peavy said. “And he had very little care for his well-being.”
Boys will be boys, and physical athletes will be physical athletes regardless of the medium. Few will reach the same heights as Holland, who graduated from Duncanville with one of the most decorated resumes in Texas high school basketball history and played a key role in the program’s rise to prominence and dominance.
Holland, 18, could become the second consecutive Duncanville alum to be selected in the lottery portion of the NBA draft in the last two years. Anthony Black (who played his first three seasons of high school basketball at Coppell before a senior-year transfer to Duncanville) was drafted sixth overall by the Orlando Magic last June.
Cosme will be in Brooklyn for Wednesday’s draft, which Holland received a green room invite to. So, too, will Peavy, assistant coach Charles Hill, former assistant coach/Duncanville girls basketball coach Neiman Ford and former assistant coach Corey Johnson, who is now the head coach at Waxahachie.
“It’s a special moment for the Duncanville family,” Cosme said. “We try not to take this moment for granted. Right now, it’s Ron’s moment.”
Holland’s projected landing spot varies. Industry experts predict that the 6-foot-8 forward could be taken as high as high as nine by the Memphis Grizzlies (The Ringer) and as low as 17th by the Los Angeles Lakers (CBS Sports). ESPN’s latest mock draft pegged him as the 13th overall selection to the Sacramento Kings, and The Athletic mocked him 15th overall to the Miami Heat.
ESPN’s Jay Bilas listed Holland as a player that could “change your mind” about a draft that’s considered to be historically weak, and said that Holland “has the talent and considerable potential to succeed in the NBA.” The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie — who ranked Holland at No. 10 on his draft board and in the “starter/All-Stars tools swing” tier — wrote that the “he’s willing to do the stuff other players don’t want to do.”
“When his motor is on, it’s the best I’ve ever seen” said Peavy, who will have had four players drafted once Holland is picked. “Honestly, he’s one of the least skilled guys in the draft, so his motor has got to be better than everybody’s. That’s why I feel like he’s got the biggest upside, because his skill is going to get better.”
The decision to avoid tackle football, it turns out, was prudent. Holland’s parents placed their son in summer basketball camps in elementary school; not because they’d been trying to groom a professional, but because they worked during the day and wanted him to participate in well-balanced extracurricular activities. They didn’t send him to high-level skill camps; not because the family wasn’t financially able to, but because, but because it “wasn’t something that we thought we needed to do,” Tarasha said.
“Were we as parents expecting it to go as far as it did?” Tarasha said. “Not necessarily.”
Said Peavy: “She didn’t care one bit about basketball, except for the fact that she knew how we held him accountable, and how we were going to make him a better person.”
And, in turn, a winner. Duncanville went 121-8 with three trips to the state tournament during Holland’s four seasons of high school basketball and lost just three games from 2021-23. He won two gold medals with Team USA at the FIBA U17 World Cup and the FIBA Americas U16 Championship. He led Duncanville to the mythical MaxPreps National Championship in 2022 and helped the team remain ranked in national polls from ESPN, Sports Illustrated and others throughout his tenure. His senior season earned him McDonald’s All-American, Texas Gatorade Player of the Year and Dallas Morning News first-team all-area honors.
“He is a winner,” Peavy said. “In high school, he never lost the last game of the season. He’s got nothing but championships and gold medals. There’s nobody that’s come through Texas with that resume.”
He didn’t make winning look easy, but he made it look like it was in his nature. At G-League Ignite — which Holland chose to play for after he requested his release from a national letter of intent that he signed with Texas — he finally experienced the bottom. Holland averaged a team-best 18.5 points and 6.7 rebounds for a program that went 2-32 and finished dead last in the NBA’s developmental association last season, but was limited to just 15 games due to a thumb injury.
“He definitely handled it with grace,” Tarasha said. “He went into the G-League with an open mind, knowing that it wasn’t going to be all about winning. It was going to be all about development. I think that he did just that — he developed. He knows that once he gets on an actual NBA team, it’s not going to be about win, win, win.”
Holland’s eventual selection will extend a high-level basketball renaissance in Dallas-Fort Worth. He and McKinney native Ja’Kobe Walter — a Baylor player whom Holland played against in the 2023 UIL 6A state championship game — are both projected first-round picks. They’d be the fifth and sixth Dallas-area natives to be drafted in the first round in the last two seasons, joining last year’s quartet of Black, Richardson’s Cason Wallace (No. 10 overall to the Oklahoma City Thunder), Lewisville’s Keyonte George (No. 16 overall to the Utah Jazz) and Red Oak’s Marcus Sasser (No. 26 overall to the Detroit Pistons).
He can become the third Duncanville alum drafted in the last four years alongside Black and Jahmi’us Ramsey, who was the Sacramento Kings’ second-round selection in 2020. The 2025 NBA draft could be even more bountiful for Duncanville with three alums — Arizona’s K.J. Lewis, SMU’s Zhuric Phelps and Georgetown’s Micah Peavy — each slated as potential picks.
Holland has already worked to give back to the Duncanville community. He held a Hoops and Health Camp last July at his alma mater and will do so again this summer. He gave away 40 bicycles to district students at the high school two days before Christmas in December.
“It’s as important as anything in this whole process,” Peavy said.
The process rewarded Holland. His city, community and school will be behind him as it continues.
“Ron’s just not a former player,” Peavy said. “He’s definitely family.”
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