National Basketball Association

Giannis might be MVP, but Jrue Holiday's defense turned NBA Finals around for Bucks

Updated Jul. 29, 2021 9:34 p.m. ET

By Yaron Weitzman
FOX Sports NBA Writer

The superstar point guard was flustered.

He had been unguardable all season, earning All-NBA honors, and he entered the playoffs with championship aspirations. But now he was being hounded by Jrue Holiday.

Everywhere he went, Holiday was there — fighting over screens or pressing into his chest or chasing from behind or cutting off passing lanes or poking away the ball.

This was April 2018, during the postseason’s opening round, and Damian Lillard never did find his groove. He shot just 35% over the course of the series, averaged just 18.5 points per game and turned the ball over more than ever before.

It was and remains the worst playoff performance of his career, as the New Orleans Pelicans disposed of Lillard’s Portland Trail Blazers in four games. Holiday wasn’t the only reason Lillard struggled — the Pelicans blitzed and trapped him at every turn — but Holiday's combination of size, skill, speed and savvy left Lillard in awe.

"To me, he’s the best defender in the league," Lillard said last August on NBA veteran JJ Redick’s podcast.

If you’ve been following the 2021 NBA Finals, this should sound familiar. Because here we are, three years after that series, and Holiday, despite at times struggling offensively, is once again at the head of an attack flummoxing opposing stars.

There, of course, was his victory-saving steal off of Devin Booker in the waning seconds of Game 5. But he has served as the Milwaukee Bucks’ primary defender on Chris Paul since Game 2.

It’s no coincidence that the Bucks have won three of those four games and now, with Game 6 slated for Tuesday, find themselves one win away from ending their 50-year title drought.

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"I saw it in Portland, when he was in New Orleans and we got swept in the first round," said Bucks guard Pat Connaughton, who was a member of that 2018 Blazers team. "Just the way he defends on a nightly basis and the way that he's able to do it in different ways. He's physical, he's quick, he's strong."

The Bucks’ plan entering the Finals was to slot the burly P.J. Tucker onto Paul so they could switch the Suns’ Paul-Deandre Ayton pick-and-roll. Tucker would slide onto Ayton, and Brook Lopez, who was guarding Ayton, would take Paul.

That plan backfired. Paul put Lopez — and every other Bucks big man — on skates, found a rhythm and racked up 32 points and nine assists in a double-digit win in Game 1.

In Game 2, the Bucks abandoned this strategy. Instead, they slid Holiday onto Paul and, when facing the Paul-Ayton pick-and-roll, reverted to their typical "drop" coverage. The defender guarding the ball handler snakes over the screen and contests from behind, while Lopez or the big man drops into the paint, walling off the rim and conceding a midrange jumper. Milwaukee added one tweak: Help defenders were instructed to shade off their men to keep Paul and Booker from comfortably stepping into midrange jumpers.

That plan also backfired. The Suns caught fire from deep, draining 20 of their 40 3-point looks to take a 2-0 series lead.

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In Game 3, Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer elected to put his faith in the man the team surrendered its starting point guard and a bounty of picks to acquire last offseason. There’d be no switching, no aggressive helping. Instead, Holiday would shadow Paul everywhere, just like he did with Lillard three years earlier.

That decision helped turn the Finals around. Paul has averaged just 16.7 points since — including a 10-point Game 4 stinker. He has coughed the ball up 15 times — after having just 22 turnovers in the first three rounds of the playoffs.

When not tracking Paul, Holiday has been tasked with tailing Booker, and the results have been the same. Booker has connected on nine of his 25 shots when matched up against Holiday, according to NBA.com’s tracking data.

Holiday is pulling off the impressive balancing act of picking up Paul full-court while maintaining enough energy and remaining in the proper position to fight over screens. "It's hard to play that hard for an entire game — anybody in this league at this level," Tucker said.

Holiday's hounding has helped transform the Suns’ once potent pick-and-roll attack into an isolation-heavy slog. Case in point: In the regular season, the Suns were fourth in the NBA with 9.6 corner 3s attempted per game, shots that usually come after a defense is broken down and the ball is swung around.

Over the past three games, they’ve launched just eight in total.

"We know that [Paul] can control the game and just kind of put it in the palm of his hand," Holiday said after Game 4. "But I think being able to have his back turned most of the game, I think it could be frustrating."

More than that, Holiday’s defense has allowed the Bucks to overcome an offense registering just 96.9 points per 100 possessions in the half court during the Finals, a six-point dip from their regular-season mark. Without the Holiday-generated turnovers and transition opportunities, it’s unlikely the Bucks would have scored enough points to pull off wins the past three games.

"The great thing about Jrue is that he can affect the game in a lot of ways," Giannis Antetokounmpo recently said.

Which is true. After all, Holiday’s offense came around in Game 5, and without his 27-point, 13-assist explosion, the Bucks wouldn’t have stolen that pivotal contest on the road.

But if the Bucks do hold on and capture the championship, it will be Holiday’s smothering defense that Milwaukee fans remember. And that Chris Paul won't be able to forget.

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.