Trading for Jrue Holiday should make the Bucks a better playoff team

The Milwaukee Bucks finally moved on from Eric Bledsoe, and his replacement, Jrue Holiday, could be the playoff boost the Bucks have needed for a while.

The most consequential move of the NBA offseason was not the Atlanta Hawks’ spending spree or the Russell Westbrook-John Wall swap, but the deal between Milwaukee and New Orleans that put 30-year-old Jrue Holiday in a Milwaukee Bucks jersey.

As a one-time All-Star who’s only once averaged more than 20 points per game and never made it past the second round of the playoffs, Holiday is not the flashiest player in the league. Aside from what it means for the future of Giannis Antetokounmpo, what makes Holiday’s trade to the Bucks special is that he has consistently been one of the best two-way players at his position in the NBA and constantly steps up his game in the postseason. In this way, Holiday is likely to vastly improve on what Milwaukee had gotten out of the point guard position in the past and give them a better shot at a championship.

In most of Holiday’s 31 career playoff games, he’s been one of the best players on the court. The 11-year veteran plays with a pace all his own and despite being a lanky 6-foot-3, appreciates physicality as much as anyone in the NBA. That has allowed him, ever since his rookie season, to impact the game on both ends of the floor once playoff time comes. Aside from the 2015 postseason when he was dealing with a stress fracture, Holiday has posted a Box Plus-Minus of at least 3.2 in each postseason he’s played in. That mark would have placed him in the top 20 among all players in the bubble playoffs this year.

The numbers show that Holiday makes a positive impact on both ends of the floor. The last time we saw Holiday in the playoffs was in 2018, when he scored 23.7 points per game on a 58.1 true-shooting percentage while putting the clamps on Damian Lillard in a Pelicans sweep. It was like a doctoral thesis on how to affect the game as a modern-day combo guard. We should probably be calling him Dr. Holiday now.

Jrue Holiday’s shot creation will be a big upgrade in the playoffs for the Milwaukee Bucks

By moving on from Eric Bledsoe and adding Holiday, the Bucks simultaneously removed their biggest offensive weakness and replaced him with someone who can be elite in the role Milwaukee will ask him to play. Holiday has been solid as a defender, scorer and playmaker in his four trips to the postseason, but where he’ll make the biggest difference over Bledsoe is as a shot creator. Dating all the way back to his days with the Philadelphia 76ers, Holiday has been able to use his size and thumping style to score even against dialed-up playoff defenses.

Already you can see the little ways Holiday’s offensive game is better suited for the playoffs than Bledsoe’s. There’s the undying handle and the way he bodies defenders just enough to slither past them, working into the paint for the angle he knows he needs. And of course, there’s the confidence in the jump shot that has eluded Bledsoe forever.

In each of the past three postseasons, according to Cleaning the Glass, Bledsoe has been able to get to the rim less often than in the regular season. The difference was especially glaring in 2020. During the regular season, 42 percent of Bledsoe’s shots came at the rim, but in the postseason fewer than a third did. Holiday may not be as quick or explosive as Bledsoe, but he can change speed and change direction like a master Formula One driver, which makes him more effective.

One area where Holiday is quietly very strong is as an isolation scorer, and it’s a well he seems to go to more often in the playoffs. Back in 2018, Holiday scored a full point per possession in isolation, per Synergy Sports play type data, and was among the top 20 percent of players. Last year he was even better, with nearly 1.1 points per isolation possession, good for the 88th percentile in the NBA.

Most of Holiday’s best playoff moments, including Game 4 against Portland in 2018 (perhaps the best game of his life), have featured tons of isolation scoring. When he has talent around him and space to work, Holiday is fully capable of creating great offense by himself.

This is one of the most important separators between Holiday and Bledsoe. Whereas most of Bledsoe’s offense had to come in transition or occasionally in pick-and-roll, Holiday will be able to wear down defenses in the playoffs or get something out of a broken possession in a way Bledsoe simply cannot. As with the rest of his game, this should give Milwaukee optimism Holiday will be even better in the playoffs, while Bledsoe was often far worse come the spring.

Another skill-set the Bucks absolutely needed in any player they were going to replace Bledsoe with was the ability to run a pick-and-roll with Antetokounmpo. Late in a playoff game, this could be just the salve the Bucks’ offense has needed in the half-court. Holiday routinely flashed beautiful screen and roll offense with Anthony Davis in New Orleans, working both as a passer and scorer.

It’s not hard at all to imagine Antetokounmpo on the other end of those lobs and drop passes. After all, he’s probably an even better athlete than Davis and needs even less space to yam on someone.

With Bledsoe, Milwaukee’s postseason offense basically relied upon Antetokounmpo to whirl his way to the rim or for Khris Middleton to finish a play as a scorer. Hardly anyone could routinely initiate advantages for themselves or teammates in the half-court, and that proved untenable in two straight upset losses in 2018 and 2019. Holiday makes the group more dynamic and harder to contain than they ever have been during the Antetokounmpo era.

Flipping the court, let’s circle back to the Portland series in 2018 to understand Holiday’s defensive impact. We all know Lillard — an MVP-caliber playmaker who can decode every coverage and still create great offense — to typically have complete control over the game at all times. But just two years ago against Holiday in the first round, Lillard was a shell of himself. It’s remarkable to look back at how Holiday stopped the clock on Dame Time and made one of the league’s great playoff performers look like a rookie seeing the speed of the big leagues for the first time.

Holiday toyed with Lillard’s timing and made him uncomfortable throughout the series. Lillard shot just 35.2 percent from the field. Now, Lillard didn’t have his now-signature deep pull-up 3 yet, but you could convince me he only worked on that shot the past couple years precisely because of what Holiday did to him.

It’s not just Lillard. This series was emblematic of the way Holiday can change a game with his defense. By the end, Portland head coach Terry Stotts was calling plays for Lillard off the ball, desperately trying to put his best player in position to succeed. But with Holiday out there, that position didn’t exist.

Eric Bledsoe, who Holiday will replace in Milwaukee, theoretically is also quite the defender. He’s incredibly quick and has good instincts. Bledsoe, though, is nowhere near the overwhelming presence that Holiday is. You won’t see Bledsoe crowd players’ space the way Holiday can, and that’s not to mention Holiday’s outstanding success guarding bigger players. The Bucks don’t really switch on defense, but size and versatility are golden in the NBA, and it helps to have a bigger guard like Holiday out there for many reasons.

For the Bucks specifically, it could mean a bit more creativity in terms of who fills what role on their defense. They’ve been incredibly regimented in past seasons, with Bledsoe always at the point of attack, long wings helping from the perimeter, Brook Lopez dropping back, and Antetokounmpo leaping in to protect the rim. With Holiday starting (and Donte DiVincenzo in place of Wesley Matthews), Milwaukee can incorporate a bit more switching if it chooses to do so, and it can trust Holiday to execute help defense because of his size in a way it couldn’t with Bledsoe.

So while the possibility of Holiday bottling up an All-Star like Lillard is exciting, Holiday should make the Bucks’ defense a bit better all around.

It’s hard to say one player will fix everything that ails a team. The NBA playoffs demand every rotation player to do their job or they’re toast. Holiday, however, adds to the Bucks’ identity nicely on defense while substantially upgrading what they’re capable of on offense. Best of all, he is a perfect partner on both ends of the floor for Antetokounmpo.

There are reports that Antetokounmpo’s priority this offseason was for Milwaukee to acquire Bogdan Bogdanovic. That fell through. With all due respect to the back-to-back MVP, however, maybe he just doesn’t know what he’s been missing. Come playoff time, Antetokounmpo will see how big of an improvement Holiday is over the other guards who’ve come through Milwaukee.

If all goes well, that should be enough to put the Bucks considerably closer to a championship.