BOSTON – If the rest of the league has one regret after two games of the NBA Finals, it’s a question the Milwaukee Bucks have to ask themselves every day: How did we get the Boston Celtics to acquire Jrue Holiday?
He was briefly available with the Portland Trail Blazers, when the Bucks cut him in favor of Damian Lillard, and the Celtics struck, dealing Malcolm Brogdon, Robert Williams III and a pair of first-round draft picks on the eve of training camp. Nine months later, Holiday is a leading Finals MVP candidate.
Two days after his 34th birthday, Holiday recorded team highs of 26 points and 11 rebounds on Sunday night. He made 11 of his 14 shots. Defensively, he pulled Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić too late, exhausting both. He did it all in a 105-98 win against the Dallas Mavericks in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, giving Boston a 2-0 series lead.
“I credit him with the win tonight,” Celtics teammate Jaylen Brown said.
Jayson Tatum was the first to welcome Holiday to a team that had reached this stage two years earlier. Everyone else soon followed suit. All the Celtics credit Holiday’s selflessness – his willingness to accept a role smaller than his status – for setting a tone that permeates the locker room. About winning everything.
“He could have easily come in and said, ‘I’m Jrue Holiday,’” said Celtics teammate Derrick White, who delivered Sunday’s game-saving block, “and I would have said, ‘Yes, you’re Jrue Holiday.’” — 100 %.'”
Instead, there was no ego, and instead there are habits of champions. Holiday was Milwaukee’s point guard and primary ball stopper on a title team. In Boston, he leaves the point guard duties to White. He relies on Tatum and Brown, whom he calls “superstars.” Some evenings he takes a backseat to Kristaps Porziņģis. Defensively, he guards every position, just like Marcus Smart, the man he eventually replaced in Boston.
“I think when you make sacrifices together and do something together,” Holiday said, “you become closer.”
Again, how did every other team in the NBA let that happen? The Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Clippers were among the top competitors for Holiday’s services, and both would have benefited greatly from his presence. No one in Boston wanted to see him land on the Miami Heat. Every contender needed Jrue Holiday, and none of them stopped him from joining a Celtics team that needed exactly that it.
“Jrue is a great teammate, nothing less than that,” Brown said. “He’s brought the championship pedigree to our team. So there’s nothing Jrue says that we question. He’s just who he is. He’s got that demeanor, that killer mentality, and we respect that. He’s a great teammate, and it’s just an honor to play alongside him.”
What that looked like in Game 2 was smart basketball: Jrue Holiday basketball. The Mavericks tried to hide Irving on vacation, so the Celtics guard led him to the dunker’s spot. There he strengthened the offense twofold. Irving couldn’t protect the rim as a help defender, and Holiday enjoyed Tatum’s feeds. Six of Tatum’s game-high 12 assists found Holiday for 13 of his 26 points. Here’s how the Celtics made a game of a night they missed their first eight three-point attempts and finished a distant 10 of 39.
“I know sometimes when I’m driving and maybe I get stuck, I need someone to float with me or be in space and in my line of sight,” said Holiday, describing how he plays off Tatum. “So I think for the most part I’m just trying to stick around for him, give him a good outlet. He’s written some great books.”
Well, that and a defense that held Dallas to 70 points over the final three quarters. According to NBA tracking data, Holiday has now guarded Irving and Dončić for 15 minutes of this series. They’ve scored 13 points on 13 shots in that span, and the Mavs are scoring 84 points per 100 possessions — essentially the worst offense in modern NBA history — whenever Holiday is defending one of their two best players.
“That experience, that pure championship DNA, you hear about all the time,” White said effusively in his praise for Holiday. “You don’t really know what it takes until you do what it takes. From the moment he joined our team at training camp, he had this kind of presence about him. He just knows how to win.”
If there was one sequence on Sunday to sum up what Holiday means to the Celtics, it’s this:
The Mavericks had a chance to cut Boston’s eight-point lead with four minutes to play. Holiday, defending Dallas forward PJ Washington, deflected a pass in the backcourt. He switched to Dončić, who had only a moment to avoid an eight-second foul. Holiday forced a bad pass, which White picked up and returned to Holiday, who delivered a three-point dagger. On the next possession, Holiday forced an Irving miss, grabbed an offensive rebound at the other end and found White for another 3.
The game was all but over and the Mavericks barely knew what hit them. It was vacation. He hit them – repeatedly. With smart layup after smart layup, a few threes, three assists, a block, a steal, a little bit of everything.
This is what Jrue Holiday does, part of everything, and it’s all a luxury for a team that had no idea he would even be available until the start of the preseason. What would these Celtics be without Holiday?
“It’s a good thing we don’t have to find out,” Tatum said. “We are very fortunate to have him.”
