Will Jrue Holiday benefit offensively from playing shooting guard next to Rajon Rondo?
Once Rajon Rondo is healthy enough to return to the lineup after undergoing sports hernia surgery in the offseason, the expectation is that he will start at point guard for the Pelicans and Jrue Holiday — fresh off of signing a five-year extension worth $126 million — will move to shooting guard.
Playing shooting guard shouldn’t be as foreign to Holiday as it’s expected to be for Chris Paul, who finds himself in a similar territory now that he’s sharing a backcourt with James Harden in Houston. Although point guard is Holiday’s natural position, Basketball-Reference estimates he’s spent 21.0 percent of his career minutes at shooting guard. That includes 65.0 percent of his minutes coming at shooting guard in the 2015-16 season, which is when Holiday averaged 16.8 points and 6.0 assists per game on what was then the highest true shooting percentage of his career.
Still, playing shooting guard with Rajon Rondo, DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis on the court is going to put Holiday in positions he’s never been before. Rondo has shot 37.0 percent from the perimeter over the last two seasons, but he is a career 30.4 percent shooter from distance. While Cousins has developed into a legitimate 3-point shooter, he finished the 2016-17 season ranked second amongst power forwards in usage rate. The only power forward ahead of him in usage was Davis.
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The concern is that playing Holiday at shooting guard next to three players who need the ball in their hands and aren’t high volume 3-point shooters will turn him into more of a spot-up shooter than he has been in the past. Despite being an above-average 3-point shooter, making Holiday a “shooter” isn’t how he’ll live up to his new contract as the highest-paid player on the Pelicans because he doesn’t generate his shots in ways traditional shooting guards like J.J. Redick, Klay Thompson, Eric Gordon or Bradley Beal do. They were all near the top of the league in catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts last season, and those opportunities have combined to represent 7.9 percent of Holiday’s offense over the last four seasons.
Holiday likes to pull-up off the dribble instead. Since 2013-14, 28.1 percent of his offense has come in the form of mid-range pull-ups. An additional 18.4 percent has come from the perimeter pull-ups. Whereas his mid-range pull-up frequency has decreased in each of those seasons, his perimeter pull-up frequency has increased to a point where it makes up a fifth of his scoring.
Holiday’s dependance on the latter compared to the former is a big reason why 70.9 percent of his made field goals were unassisted last season. It’s possible he’s been miscast as a primary playmaker for most of his career, but it’s not as though Holiday’s game is tailor made to spending more time off ball. Only 11.4 percent of his offense came from spot-ups last season, and he ranked in the 41.5 percentile with 0.92 points per possession. Another 4.7 percent came from cuts and moving off of screens, which are two play types usually associated with shooting guards.
Because Holiday isn’t an elite shooter, perhaps the best way to categorize his role moving forward is as a scorer rather than a shooting guard. Rondo has always been a pass-first point guard, making him a natural fit next to Davis and Cousins, both of whom are dominant scorers in the frontcourt. Holiday could therefore become the Pelicans’ version of CJ McCollum — an undersized but crafty scorer at the two who can create his shot in a variety of ways as the secondary ball-handler and isn’t expected to create for others in volume.
Doing so wouldn’t necessarily prevent Holiday from playing to his strengths, particularly when it comes to the pick-and-roll. It’s where Holiday created 50.7 percent of his offense last season, and he ranked in the 55.4 percentile with 0.81 points per possession. With Rondo also generating the bulk of his offense in the pick-and-roll, those possessions could look something like this:
The beauty of the Pelicans is that they now have two big men who can roll to the basket and pop to the perimeter depending on how the defense is covering them. It means they have the option of running a pick-and-roll between Rondo and Davis before running a second pick-and-roll between Holiday and Cousins on the same possession. (Or vice versa). Davis can roll to the basket and put himself in position to cut to the rim while Cousins pops to the 3-point line, giving Holiday two solid options when he turns the corner against a scrambled defense.
Holiday could see an uptick in handoffs for similar reasons. They represented 5.9 percent of his offense last season, but he ranked in the 86.3 percentile with 1.10 points per possession. Even if his pick-and-roll frequency drops this season, an increase in handoffs would help make up the difference. McCollum, for example, created 35.0 percent of his offense in the pick-and-roll and 9.2 percent in the form of handoffs last season. The two plays combined for 44.2 percent of his offense compared to 56.6 for Holiday.
Since Cousins and Davis have the ability to create their own shot around the elbows — they finished last season ranked second and fifth respectively in elbow touches per game — handoffs would help establish Holiday as an off ball threat without restricting him to spot-up opportunities.
The same goes for cuts. Holiday won’t ever likely be a dominant scorer off of screens because of his limitations as a shooter — those plays made up 2.5 percent of his offense last season — but he can make a difference without the ball in his hands by setting his own screens and cutting to open spaces when the defense overhelps on Davis or Cousins. While he’s not the most explosive of guards, he’s an incredibly crafty player who knows how to utilize changes in speed to gain a step on defenders.
“We’ve been a little bit surprised off the ball what a good cutter that [Holiday] is,” Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry said during training camp. “Because for us, he’s handled the ball almost exclusively when he’s in the game as a point guard. But playing him off the ball, he’s made some great back cuts and he’s made some great cuts in the lane. The timing of it has been great. That’s been good to see.”
Whether or not that actually helps Holiday become a better player remains to be seen. According to ESPN’s Zach Lowe, the Pelicans worried about Holiday’s vision and shot selection as the primary ball handler. By pairing him with Rondo — a throwback point guard who is known for his vision and propensity to pass rather than shoot — the theory is Holiday will be able to focus more on looking for his own shot whenever he has possession of the ball. It’s what Holiday likely means when he says Rondo “makes scoring so much easier” for everyone.
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That’s the optimistic view anyway. The pessimistic view is that Holiday isn’t good enough of a shooter to move off ball and the Pelicans have too many high usage player in the lineup for Holiday to thrive in this situation. It’s what makes him a fascinating case study on one of the more polarizing teams in the league.