Ranking the Roster: Jrue Holiday Hops Into Third

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    Could absence have made the heart grow fonder? It’s certainly a possibility when it came to the determination between Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton for the third spot in our Ranking the Roster exercise. In Middleton’s absence during last year’s Playoffs, Holiday was forced into a second fiddle offensive role, one in which he repeatedly slammed his head against the wall to little success in the defining moments of the Boston Celtics series. Still, I could realistically see a world in which Holiday was injured last year, Khris only hits say 37% of his shots against the Celts, and we’re saying we needed Holiday’s defensive tenacity to deter one of Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum alongside his additional ballhandling. Silly as it is to mince the granulest of granular details between the two, I came to the same conclusion as the consensus.

    Holiday’s defensive switchability and forcefulness almost singlehandedly led the Bucks to the improbable Game Five win over the Celts with his block and steal sequence.

    He is the heart and soul of Milwaukee’s perimeter defense, their most disruptive player on that side of the court and perhaps their most indispensable defensive player given some of the dropoff in Khris’s game as a wing defender and Wes Matthews’ age. Giannis Antetokounmpo probably takes that role given rim protection is considered more valuable than point-of-attack defense, but the point stands, Holiday’s defense was integral to the title run.

    What’s really hampered him has been a steep offensive decline both of his postseasons with the Bucks. Despite shooting 39.2% and 41.1% from deep during his first two regular seasons with the Bucks, he’s suffered from the same 3-point percentage Playoff plague that’s infected this franchise every year of Bud’s tenure. He hit 30.6% of his 3-point shots in the title run postseason, and 31.6% last year.

    More infuriating for fans (or at least this fan) has been the brain farts that happen when the ball leaves his hand near the rim. He shot 62% or better at the rim, per Cleaning the Glass, in both of his regular seasons with the Bucks. In the postseason, he hit 54%. If you’d like a comparison point for what 54% at the rim means, think about Donte DiVincenzo during the 2020-21 season, who hit precisely that figure near the tin. Apologies in advance for ruining your Wednesday with those memories.

    Lost in the shuffle of his struggles last year as a scorer were that he simply didn’t have the latitude to try and create for his teammates. The saving grace for his offensive struggles in the title run was that he averaged 8.7 assists per game during those Playoffs. For a team that typically has fairly even assist distributions among their big three, that’s an impressive leap up from the 5.1 dishes per game that Giannis and Khris averaged in that 2020-21 postseason. Middleton’s presence as a shooter with and without the ball opened up a few more lanes for Holiday to ably get his teammates involved, whereas he was thrust into a primary scorer role in the 2022 Playoffs that he doesn’t seem suited for against premier competition.

    I went into last year thinking a viable path for this team without PJ Tucker would be to rely on more offensive firepower than what we saw in the 2020-21 year. A large part of that was predicated on the idea there had to be some positive regression coming for Holiday. While he acquitted himself well against the Bulls, the Boston series showed some diminishing returns of forcing him to operate so much as a scorer with the ball in his hands. Given offensive production in the postseason remains the greatest issue with this team at large, I’m okay putting Holiday behind Middleton for this exercise.

    Here we are at the endgame. We don’t even need to do this poll, but what the heck, polls are fun.