BOSTON – The Milwaukee Bucks never gave up on Jrue Holiday.
It was never so simple.
Last October, six months after being drafted in the first round by the Miami Heat and looking for ways to improve the roster, they saw an opportunity to pair Giannis Antetokounmpo with a living legend in Damian Lillard and decided to do the same. deal. To be fair to the Bucks, who surely had mixed emotions when they watched Holiday dominate Game 2 of the NBA Finals for the Boston Celtics on Sunday night, let’s not forget that the move was almost universally praised at the time.
But the secrecy with which Milwaukee operated before the trade, including the unorthodox decision to spend those final three days using the team’s locker room at Fiserv Forum as a temporary headquarters to avoid leaks to the media, speaks volumes about how much they still revered the two-time All-Star who played a big role in their 2021 title.
In the event that Lillard’s deal with Portland did not come to fruition, there was a strong preference for Holiday to never know that he had almost been moved. What’s more, there was still internal confidence that the Bucks could win it all under Holiday for a second time if the roster remained intact.
These are the type of complicated and often delicate situations that arise when managing an NBA team. But the deal was done, of course, and Holiday, 33, spent just four days as a Portland Trail Blazer before landing on this Celtics team that is halfway to its goal of winning the franchise’s 18th championship. (which would break the tie). for the league lead with the Los Angeles Lakers).
Listening to Holiday reflect on all of this after his remarkable performance in Game 2, when he scored 26 points (11-of-14 shooting), 11 rebounds and three assists in a 105-98 victory, was to understand that he is at peace with everything. . . And no, as he insisted, that’s not the case because he’s still in the hunt for the Larry O’Brien trophy and the Bucks have been home since early May.
“I’m close with (Bucks general manager) Jon (Horst),” Holiday told The Athletic after Game 2. “Obviously, we’ve been through a lot and won together. But I’ve never been the type to feel hurt. I would even tell you that my feelings were not hurt in this exchange.
“It was just that for me, personally, and I can’t speak for my wife and kids, but it was a shock. It was a shock, right? You wake up from a nap, get a call, and five minutes later you go somewhere else. Would it have been nice to know, maybe a day in advance? Yes, but I understand Jon’s point: 100 percent. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”
His wife, Lauren, had been expressed frustration with how the deal was handled. But time heals all wounds, and Jrue is now in a better basketball place than before. As he recalled, the Trail Blazers’ handling of their uncertain future played a pivotal role along the way.
“Portland contacted me about what they wanted to do,” Holiday said. “They told me their schedule and how they saw the team and what I would contribute and all that. But they also asked me if I wanted to be (traded). So they gave me the options, which I really respect, because I’ve never had them before. (Trail Blazers head coach) Chauncey (Billups) and the general manager (Joe Cronin) did a great job of communicating with me and honestly putting me in a place to be here now.
“So after we had that conversation, three or four days went by not knowing where I was going to go. (But) there was an understanding that (his next team) would be competitive. There was an understanding and they sent me back here.”
When Holiday arrived in Boston, that meant going from a 54-year-old veteran and decorated coach, Mike Budenholzer, to a 35-year-old coach, Joe Mazzulla, who was entering his first full season in charge of the Celtics. Holiday and Mazzulla had only spent time together once, during the 2023 All-Star weekend, in which Holiday saw just nine minutes of play in Team Giannis’ 184-175 victory over Team LeBron.
“I actually appreciate that he only played (nine) minutes in the All-Star Game,” Holiday said. “I’m just not as good as the others and we won the game. So yeah, he trained well.
“And I actually talked to him more about his faith and more outside of basketball and got to know him a little more at the All-Star Game. “It was great, meeting someone and building a relationship and not even knowing that, in the future, he would be my coach.”
But even before they connected that weekend, Mazzulla said he felt like he knew Holiday because of their shared Christian faith. More specifically, Mazzulla used to use a mobile app that presented users with Christmas readings of Bible verses.
“His voice is in the app, reading verses, and I was listening to it,” Mazzulla told The Athletic. “So I’ve always had a spiritual connection with him.”
The connection grew as their first season together progressed, and Holiday’s two-way talents gave the Celtics the type of perimeter defense that no other team in the league could claim. With Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown leading the way, and Holiday joining Kristaps Porziņģis as the new additions that make this Celtics team much more potent than the one that lost to Golden State in the finals two years ago, Boston took the regular season. . And after everything went so well, Holiday was rewarded with a four-year, $135 million contract extension in mid-April that will make him a pillar of this Celtics era.
As we were reminded in Game 2, the Christmas influence isn’t always front and center. He was the undisputed star of the last Finals, having made the Mavericks pay that night when Tatum and Brown were average by his standards, but he spent his postgame press conference making sure the basketball world knew where he stood in the Celtics power rankings. . After saying in an interview with SiriusXM that he agreed with Dallas coach Jason Kidd’s assessment that Brown was Boston’s best player, he took the time to clarify that he viewed Tatum and Brown as the team’s co-leaders. .
Truth be told, it was Holiday who looked like the Celtics’ best player Sunday night. And for Mazzulla, who has seen the impact up close and personal all season, he couldn’t be happier that the Bucks decided to move forward with him.
“I felt his impact at times throughout the season,” Mazzulla said. “He’s so good and so nice that he doesn’t want to step on people. But there have been 10 to 12 times where he took the reins of the game and you were like, ‘he’s okay, that’s the guy.’ He picks and chooses his places very, very well, and having him is priceless.”
Required reading
(Top photo by Jrue Holiday: Mercedes Oliver/NBAE via /Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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