Milwaukee Bucks point guard Jrue Holiday, Oshkosh’s Tyrese Haliburton named Eastern Conference all-stars

Bucks guard Jrue Holiday heads back on defense after drilling a three-pointer against the Hawks during the first quarter Wednesday night.

A few weeks ago, Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday was asked “what makes an all-star player in the NBA?”

“I don’t know, if you want to be completely honest,” he said with a chuckle. “I mean, you score a lot? You make the game fun. Highlights. Lot of dunks. I don’t do any of that, so I don’t know how I’m going to be an all-star.

“I’ve been scoring a lot, but I don’t dunk. I don’t run really fast. I don’t scream and shout. I feel like it’s entertainment, you know? Entertainment as well as winning.

“That’s one thing I feel like our team has done pretty, pretty well, is winning, and guys stepping up on our team when our big dogs are down, being able to play well.”

Holiday might have a better answer to the question now as the league’s assistant coaches voted him onto the team, which is his first since 2012-13 when he was a 22-year-old in Philadelphia.

“I love my vacation just as much as anybody else,” he said. “So if I go to the break and I get to go on a beach somewhere, I get to go home, I’m OK with that. But I would love to be an all-star, to be completely honest.”

Coach’s votes were due on Monday, January 30 and the team was announced Thursday.

Heading into Thursday night’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers, Holiday is averaging 19.4 points, 7.2 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game (most since 2018-19). He earned his second career conference player of the week award for the week of Jan. 16-22 and has 12 double-doubles on the season.

“What he was able to do while both Khris (Middleton) and Giannis (Antetokounmpo) were out, he carried us there for a while,” Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer said. ” It was great to see how aggressive he could be and what he could do. To have him at the front of our defense, all the different matchups he takes every night. He’s an incredibly special player. We’re incredibly fortunate to have him.”

He missed 11 of the Bucks’ first 38 games with an ankle injury and various illnesses and wasn’t truly healthy when he played in the early part of the year. But since coming back for good on Jan. 6, Holiday has averaged 21.4 points, 7.3 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game over his last 13 games.

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“He’s an all-star every year to me, just the way he plays on both sides of the basketball,” Los Angeles Clippers head coach Ty Lue said of Holiday. “He doesn’t get enough credit for what he does. He reminds me a lot of Andre Miller in my era, an all-star to me all the time and got snubbed a lot. So I’m definitely very happy for Jrue and he definitely deserves it.”

According to a league source, Holiday will earn a $324,000 bonus for making the team.

Holiday will join teammate Giannis Antetokounmpo in Salt Lake City for the All-Star Game on Feb. 19 in Vivint Arena.

Captain Giannis Antetokounmpo plans to pick Jrue Holiday for his team

Antetokounmpo will serve as a captain for one of the teams, opposing the team of Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James.

Each captain will draft their teams on the court before the game tips off.

“So, my goal is very, very simple,” Antetokounmpo said of how he’s going to approach the draft. “Obviously Jrue Holiday is going to be on my team. So we know that.

“I don’t know how the formula will be, if we’re going to pick the starters first or the reserves first, but whatever it is, Jrue Holiday gotta be on my team, just having him in the locker room and going through this experience with him would be an awesome experience, awesome feeling.

“And, the goal is to beat LeBron’s team. They say GM LeBron has never lost in the all-star game and hopefully this can be the first time he loses.”

The Bucks, who enter Thursday night’s game as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference and one of only three teams in the league with at least 34 victories, will have just one all-star in Giannis Antetokounmpo.

It is the second time in three seasons he is heading to the mid-season exhibition as the only representative of the Bucks. The last time was in the championship season of 2020-21. Khris Middleton had made three all-star games (2019, 2020, 2022) in the last four seasons.

Tyrese Haliburton makes first all-star team

The Oshkosh native Tyrese Haliburton was named to his first all-star team by the league’s assistant coaches despite missing the last 10 games heading into Thursday night’s announcement. Haliburton injured an elbow and a knee on Jan. 11, but over his first 40 games he put himself in the running for Most Improved Player and had the Pacers in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race.

In 40 games, the 22-year-old point guard became the face of the Pacers franchise by averaging a career-high 20.2 points per game on 48% shooting. Haliburton is also averaging a career-high and league-high 10.2 assists per game, along with 4.0 rebounds per game.

And before he got injured during a Jan. 11 loss to the New York Knicks, the Pacers had a 23-18 record. Beginning with that game in New York, the Pacers went 1-10 without Haliburton.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bucks’ Holiday, Oshkosh’s Haliburton named Eastern Conference all-stars