Collin Gillespie is showing up in free agency as more than a backup point guard. John Hollinger placed him at No. 10 on his Top 25 NBA Free Agents list and backed that with a BORD$ valuation of $21.5 million, a number that puts real money on a player who had little traction until he blew up in his age-26 season.
That is why Gillespie is drawing attention now. The NBA season is over, the league is in the offseason window between the NBA Finals and the start of free agency, and the Phoenix Suns have several unresolved decisions to make. Hollinger's annual list is built to estimate market value, not simply to reward a hot stretch, and this one says Gillespie's year was good enough to put him inside the top 10.
BORD$ is not a hunch. Hollinger says the model uses analytics and playing-time data from the last two seasons, then projects what a player should be worth in the coming season based on age and performance before turning that into a salary estimate tied to a projected 2026-27 cap of $165 million. On that framework, Gillespie's rise is straightforward to explain: he was fantastic last year, he is a career 40.5 percent 3-point shooter on serious volume, and he can hold his own on defense while running an offense.
The friction is the price. Gillespie is still being described as a backup point guard, yet Hollinger's estimate lands at $21.5 million, which is the kind of money usually discussed for a much larger role. Paying Gillespie fifth-starter money is not crazy if the Suns believe the numbers reflect what he can do, but the valuation does not answer the harder question of whether they will actually be willing to meet that market.
He was not the only Suns name on the list. Mark Williams checked in at No. 23, while Jordan Goodwin and Amir Coffey did not crack the top 25. For the Suns, that leaves Gillespie as the clearest free-agent case to watch, with his ranking making him one of the more valuable pieces in a class Hollinger does not view as especially deep.
The next step is the one the rankings cannot settle: whether Collin Gillespie and the Phoenix Suns can turn a No. 10 valuation into a contract. Free agency will answer that soon enough, but the number on the page already tells you the market may be higher than the label on the player.
