The Boston Celtics Need More from Jrue Holiday To Save Their Season

With a 3-1 deficit in front of them (a mountain only 4.4 percent of teams facing it have ever climbed) and their best player out because a devastating injury, the Boston Celtics are in desperate need of a miracle if they hope to keep their title defense alive.

If only the Celtics had another two-way All-Star in their ranks who could fill the massive shoes left by Jayson Tatum’s absence — someone to help carry the creation burden alongside Boston’s other battered and bruised All-NBA forward (Jaylen Brown). But wait, they do….

Aggressive Jrue Holiday Used To Make Boston Unbeatable

It was Game 1 of the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals. The Indiana Pacers started off the series trying to play hide-and-seek with Tyrese Haliburton by putting him on Jrue Holiday. Unfortunately, the Pacers picked a bad spot, as Holiday responded with a season-high 28 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and three steals on 78.3 percent true shooting.

This performance is what separated Holiday from his predecessor, Marcus Smart. As the 2022 Defensive Player of the Year, Smart helped guide the Celtics to a handful of deep playoff runs with his lockdown perimeter defense and excellent ball-handling/ing. However, one of the reasons the Celtics would consistently come up short was Smart didn’t scare defenses enough as a scorer or floor-spacer.

Holiday gave the Celtics a former 20-point scorer who could slot in as a three-and-D role player (career 37 percent 3-point shooter and six-time All-Defense recipient). But when the moment called for it, he could also summon the player he was with the Milwaukee Bucks and New Orleans Pelicans to prey on the weaker defenders who opponents would try to match up against him. Holiday made it so opposing teams had nowhere to run against the Celtics.

Holiday Hasn’t Been Aggressive Against The Knicks

Notice how I’m talking about this version of Holiday in the past tense? That’s because he’s not been doing this in the Celtics’ second-round series against the New York Knicks.

Despite having the Knicks’ worst starting defender shadowing him in Jalen Brunson, Holiday hasn’t attempted more than six field goals since Game 1. During that three-game span, he’s averaging just 7.3 points. His timidness is letting Brunson off the hook and forcing the Celtics to mismatch hunt when they do want to attack the undersized guard, which bogs down their offensive flow.

Over the years, Holiday has been less and less willing to hunt for his own shot on drives (as shown below). And this postseason, that tendency has only increased. During the regular season, Holiday ed out of 45.8 percent of his drives (per NBA.com). In the playoffs, that number has ballooned up to 51.7 percent.

Holiday Needs To Shoot More 

With 25 points per game now missing from the Celtics’ lineup, the need for Holiday to be assertive is even more dire. Yes, Holiday’s age (he turns 35 in a month) and the hamstring injury he endured during the Celtics’ first-round series against the Orlando Magic are holding him back. But Holiday has shown flashes of being the human bulldozer who terrorized smaller point guards in his heyday. Look how he easily dispatches Brunson for Boston’s first bucket of Game 2:

Holiday is also a much better er and decision-maker than Brown (check out this awesome no-look dime he made in Game 4). So, if he can do more table-setting, the Celtics have a better chance of staying out of the mud and exploiting the advantages the Knicks’ rotation-heavy scheme leaves them vulnerable to.

In most situations, the Celtics are fine with Holiday being their Swiss Army Knife defender who attacks closeouts and hits spot-up triples. But this isn’t most situations. It’s do-or-die. And if they want to stave off elimination and keep the Knicks from their first Eastern Conference Finals berth since 2000, Holiday needs to be the offensive player he was before he arrived in Boston.