Bucks point guard Jrue Holiday is tremendous with basketball in his hands, and off it, he is a defensive genius.
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Jrue Holiday is one of the best if not the best defensive guards in the league. It might not seem like it but the Bucks’ point guard is a 13-year veteran of the game who came in 2009 with a generational talent in Stephen Curry.
There were a lot of good players in that for Curry to come in at 7th and Jrue at 17th but none among Blake Griffin, James Harden, DeMar DeRozan, etc played a major part in a team winning a championship.
Davidson’s Curry had an entirely different career path where he didn’t only create a legacy for himself and the Warriors by becoming the GOAT shooter of all time and leading them to 4 championships, and changing the way how basketball is played now.
UCLA’s Holiday though is more like a kingmaker. A 6’3 point guard might have just one All-Star appearance and 4 All-Defensive team selections to show for it, but he is the toughest match-up for positions one through four.
Jrue Holiday is a league favorite player, the coaches in the West are his big fans
It quite literally was not possible for Giannis Antetokounmpo to win his first championship for the Milwaukee Bucks without Jrue at their helm to play a significant role throughout the 2020-21 season.
He averaged 17.7 points, 4.5 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 1.6 steals per game, and 17.3p/5.7r/8.7a/1.7s per game in the Playoffs.
Although those are seriously good numbers, they still don’t do justice to what he brings to the table each night by always taking on the challenge to guard the best player of the opposition team irrespective of their height.
But everyone in the league knows it like day and night and that’s what matters.
Holiday always takes on the best opposition player, and stops them, yet somehow he has no DPOYs to show for it
When it’s all said and done, he might not make a record All-Defensive team appearances or win a DPOY award which expects you to look like the best defender on the court even when you never take on the best player/s of the opposition teams.
But Jrue will be an all-time elite two-way guard who could do anything and everything with the basketball that a coach could ask for ideally.
The former Pelicans man always takes on the best player of the opposition irrespective of the height difference and plays such dogged defense on them that they couldn’t be even half as efficient as their usual self.
Although he couldn’t be as dominant against Kevin Durant, his defense on the 6’10 Nets forward during their last possession in the last game of the ECFs, helped them to the 2021 Finals. And then obviously win it by doing the same against Devin Booker and CP3.
But he had already lost the DPOY to Rudy Gobert by then. Even last season he was one of the best defenders in the league, but Marcus Smart, who also generally doesn’t have to take on the opposition’s best player won it.
We saw what Stephen Curry did to the 2022 DPOY in the Finals, not a good look for the NBA.
