Milwaukee Bucks’ title hopes rely on Jrue Holiday’s ability to play starring role

By Yaron WeitzmanFOX Sports NBA Writer

Last offseason, the Milwaukee Bucks placed a bet. 

They were coming off a second straight heartbreaking playoff finish, once again leaving them with nothing to show for all their regular-season success. They recognized something needed to change. And that change, they decided, would come at point guard.  

They took Eric Bledsoe — the incumbent at the position who had performed like a borderline All-Star during those two regular seasons, but, like the Bucks as a team, had stumbled in the playoffs — and packaged him with George Hill, three future first-round picks and the rights to two pick swaps. They sent all that to the New Orleans Pelicans in order to acquire Jrue Holiday. Then in April, they handed Holiday a four-year, $160-million deal.

Holiday was not the sort of player you’d expect to see on the other end of one of these packages. He was a one-time All-Star, not a perennial All-NBA candidate. But the Bucks didn’t believe they needed a superstar. They were so close to title contention, they just wanted a point guard who could lift them along the margins, who could knock down open shots, match Bledsoe’s lockdown defense and carry the offense for spurts.

Most importantly, they needed a point guard who, to use a Draymond Green reference, could be a 16-game player, not an 82-game one.  

Holiday excelled during the regular season, but his play during his first playoff run with the Bucks has been more of the “8-game player” variety. He oscillates between looking like a star and Bledsoe 2.0. On the opening night of the NBA Finals, he was the latter. That doesn’t mean he deserves all the blame for the Bucks’ 118-105 loss to the Phoenix Suns. But we’re now bordering on a trend, one that if not corrected could cost the Bucks the title.

Holiday’s final line (10 points, nine assists, seven rebounds) wasn’t avert-your-eyes awful. His shooting, on the other hand, was putrid. He misfired on 10 of his 14 shots from the field and clanked all four of his looks from deep. His struggles caused a chain reaction.

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For all the talk after Game 1 about the Bucks’ pick-and-roll coverage, it was their offense that let them down. They finished the game with an offensive rating of 105, a mark that during the season would have been second-to-last, and were even more pathetic in the half court, scoring at a rate of 92.9 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning The Glass.

What went wrong? Sure, Giannis Antetokounmpo wasn’t his typical explosive self. But he did drop 20 points and his running mate, Khris Middleton, did rack up 29 while drilling five of his 12 triples. And the Bucks’ role players did make their 3s, with P.J. Tucker, Brook Lopez, Bobby Portis, Pat Connaughton, Bryn Forbes and Jeff Teague shooting a combined 10-for-18. 

When it came to the offensive end of the floor, there was only one Bucks player who didn’t carry his weight.

“I think I had a bad shooting night. I had a lot of opportunities to make layups and shots and they weren’t falling,” Holiday told reporters after the game. “I think I do a little bit more than scoring, just getting people plays and 3s and driving to the basket, but me personally, I didn’t shoot well tonight.”

Holiday is right about setting the table for teammates, and his defense was excellent, per usual (Suns guard Devin Booker was 0-for-6 when shooting against Holiday, according to NBA.com’s tracking data). It was Holiday’s shooting that left much to be desired. Just as it has all postseason.

During the playoffs, he has connected on just 41% of his looks, and just a ghastly 28.8% from deep. That latter number is a 10% drop-off from his regular-season mark. He has been bad on both pull-up 3s (28.6%, compared to 40.2% during the regular season) and catch-and-shoots (30%, compared to 37.9%). And he’s not faring much better in the paint, finishing just 57% of his shots at the rim throughout the playoffs; that number was 67% during the regular season.

After Game 1, Holiday admitted that he’s struggling as the Bucks’ third option. His best performances this playoff run — Games 5 and 6 of the Eastern Conference finals against Atlanta, in which he combined for 52 points, 22 assists and shot 20-for-43 from the field — came with Antetokounmpo sidelined.

In Game 1, Antetokounmpo was back on the floor, and once again Holiday fell back on some of his more puzzling habits. This postseason he has averaged four fewer assists per 36 minutes when playing alongside Antetokounmpo, and his field-goal percentage has plummeted by nearly five percentage points, per NBA.com.

“Sometimes it gets just a bit difficult, or it’s just a bit different because we have another ball-handler and somebody that’s great in transition and makes plays for others,” Holiday said after Game 1. “Sometimes rhythm could be off, but I’ve just got to continue to be aggressive.”

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He rushed poor shots. He passed up good ones. He bailed out the Suns by launching contested jumpers. He leaned on his step-back instead of attacking the paint. He only attempted two free throws. He often looked unsure. He plays a different position, but it brought to mind the way Kevin Love and Chris Bosh grappled with the same transition when linking up with other stars.

“I think in that perfect, ideal world all three guys are hitting and clicking and everything is perfect,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said of his “Big 3” of Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Holiday. “But I’m guessing if you look at any team that has three great players or three really significant players, I bet a lot of nights it’s two out of three that they’re going and playing well. So I think different teams, different people have lived that experience.”

That’s fair. And we can all empathize with Holiday’s desire to balance aggression with making sure Antetokounmpo and Middleton are given all the room they need to operate. But he also needs to figure it out if the Bucks have any hopes of ending their 50-year title drought.

Making quicker and more confident decisions would be a good place to start. And using his size and physicality to overwhelm the smaller Chris Paul could pay dividends on both ends of the floor. 

But there’s also a scenario in which a couple of weeks from now we’re discussing how the Bucks’ season came down to Holiday’s ability to hit jumpers. Bledsoe couldn’t, and it cost him and the team. The Bucks then bet everything they had left on Holiday’s potential to be better, to be the difference. 

We’re about to find out if they were right.

Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer for FOX Sports and the author of “Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports.” Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman. 

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