Bucks acquire Jrue Holiday - Trade done - Bucks 2022 to CLE unprotected

[LuessiT]

The biggest advantage Jrue has over Bledsoe is he can defend taller players. We'll see how much we take advantage of that.
Everything else is just wishful thinking.

Bledsoe played some spectacular defense on Butler. These days if you're exceptionally strong you can guard a few positions up.

[tedbrogen]

They did go full switch against the Magic for small stretches when Vuc was destroying them on open threes. I seem to remember that while the Magic guards could get pull up jumpers off against Brook, that wasn't the biggest issue when they were switching, it was that Vuc was taking Bledsoe and Wes into the post and took them to school. I remember similar issues against the Heat with Bam taking the guards into the low post on switches. Not saying a team with better guards/wings wouldn't go at Brook more, but it definitely didn't help that Bledsoe was also best suited for a defense that didn't switch. Similarly, Wes was also not best suited for a switching defense because he was good at guarding one specific type of player.

Jrue, Craig, DDV, Pat, Wilson, Midds, and Giannis are all very switchable defensively. Brook and DJA are not. Portis should be able to but has a pretty bad rep defensively. And Forbes can't guard anybody so if teams want to waste time trying to get him into different matchups, they are just burning shot clock.

I honestly don't remember those stretches but if having a PG who can guard Vucevic is a prerequisite for a switching defense, then hardly any team in the league should even be considering it. I remember a whole lot of Vucevic eating the Slowpez brothers for lunch though. Honestly they were so slow that they couldn't even guard him in the post, let alone out on the perimeter, where it was a shooting drill for him. I remember trying Marvin on Vucevic a lot, but he was only marginally better, if at all.

Portis is an awful defender but he's another guy who you just play in the drop defense like Brook to mitigate the damage. Just park it in the paint and be big and tall. So we're stuck with the drop defense again unless DJW emerges. Just pray the Bucks shoot their 3's a little better and their opponents struggle a little more in the playoffs I guess.

I mean there's a misconception about switching. Yes, if you switch a lot the opposing team will eventually be able to get the matchups they want but they need to run the necessary action. You'll be deep into the shot clock and won't have to defend many different moves and counters. So yes, your 1 may have to guard some 5's in the post but the shot clock will be at 7 and the double team is coming if they're even capable of feeding the post.
Also not every team is capable of running the play action to force the matchups they want. E.g. very few teams can run 4/5 PnRs.

That is a good point and kind of why the Bucks crush the regular season, it takes a certain skillset from the big men on the other team to force the Bucks out of the drop zone. If you have any bigs on the floor who can't hit from distance or are unwilling to take a high volume amount of shots, it does force them to settle for lower efficiency shots (runners, pull-up twos with a trailer on their hip, so forth).

I don't believe they need to completely abandon the drop zone altogether. It can be a useful tool against teams not able to exploit it, especially in the regular season to conserve energy. But they need some other options, such as a zone with Lopez at the basket and using the length of everyone else to defend the perimeter and at least one lineup that can go full switch (Jrue, Craig, Midds, Giannis, Wilson should be able to but that could be a 3 on 5 situation on offense if Craig can't at least hit corner threes and Wilson has zero confidence). More importantly, they need to try out the alternatives to the drop zone in the regular season rather than waiting until it's panic time in the playoffs when behind double digits because Vuc or someone is forcing their hand.

[jakecronus8]

Kind of a fruitless endeavor to debate Bledsoe/Holiday until the postseason.

I’m still very on the fence about the trade and I think a lot of casuals are going to be expecting a lot more out of Holiday despite him likely putting up similar numbers to Bledsoe in this upcoming regular season.

Long story short, let’s just win it all. If they fall short again and Holiday looks less than stellar, im afraid the front office may fall victim to the sunken cost fallacy on a nice player in Holiday. I’m very wary of committing Max or near max money and multiple years to a 31 year old point guard who’s not a great shooter and not a great floor general.

[DrWood]

The biggest advantage Jrue has over Bledsoe is he can defend taller players. We'll see how much we take advantage of that.
Everything else is just wishful thinking.

Holiday isn't a great shooter, but he's a better shooter than Bled, especially on catch and shoot and corner 3's. The gap in their playoff three point percentage is absolute huge as well.

He's marginally a better shooter. I'm a playoffs=small sample kind of guy, for the most part.

[fan230]

Kind of a fruitless endeavor to debate Bledsoe/Holiday until the postseason.

I’m still very on the fence about the trade and I think a lot of casuals are going to be expecting a lot more out of Holiday despite him likely putting up similar numbers to Bledsoe in this upcoming regular season.

Long story short, let’s just win it all. If they fall short again and Holiday looks less than stellar, im afraid the front office may fall victim to the sunken cost fallacy on a nice player in Holiday. I’m very wary of committing Max or near max money and multiple years to a 31 year old point guard who’s not a great shooter and not a great floor general.

Jrue’s profile as described above, looks unappealing to me; I had been excited by his signing. Let the real season begin and we will know very soon if the fo did a great or a poor job.

[Matches Malone]

Kind of a fruitless endeavor to debate Bledsoe/Holiday until the postseason.

I’m still very on the fence about the trade and I think a lot of casuals are going to be expecting a lot more out of Holiday despite him likely putting up similar numbers to Bledsoe in this upcoming regular season.

Long story short, let’s just win it all. If they fall short again and Holiday looks less than stellar, im afraid the front office may fall victim to the sunken cost fallacy on a nice player in Holiday. I’m very wary of committing Max or near max money and multiple years to a 31 year old point guard who’s not a great shooter and not a great floor general.

Jrue’s profile as described above, looks unappealing to me; I had been excited by his signing. Let the real season begin and we will know very soon if the fo did a great or a poor job.

idk he looked pretty good last night and made Bled look like a little kid when they went 1v1. If Jrue can continue to shoot the 3 and those step backs with confidence, I think Holiday will be better than Bledsoe in the end.

[LUKE23]

He's marginally a better shooter. I'm a playoffs=small sample kind of guy, for the most part.

Bled has played 48 playoff games, Holiday has played 30. That's a pretty decent sample size.

[ShootingtheJ]

The biggest advantage Jrue has over Bledsoe is he can defend taller players. We'll see how much we take advantage of that.
Everything else is just wishful thinking.

Holiday isn't a great shooter, but he's a better shooter than Bled, especially on catch and shoot and corner 3's. The gap in their playoff three point percentage is absolute huge as well.

He's marginally a better shooter. I'm a playoffs=small sample kind of guy, for the most part.

Maybe so, but I think the big difference between the 2 is Holiday can be trusted to finish games, Bledsoe couldn't. Bledsoe only played 28 minutes a game because terrible decision making.

[M-C-G]

Kind of a fruitless endeavor to debate Bledsoe/Holiday until the postseason.

I’m still very on the fence about the trade and I think a lot of casuals are going to be expecting a lot more out of Holiday despite him likely putting up similar numbers to Bledsoe in this upcoming regular season.

Long story short, let’s just win it all. If they fall short again and Holiday looks less than stellar, im afraid the front office may fall victim to the sunken cost fallacy on a nice player in Holiday. I’m very wary of committing Max or near max money and multiple years to a 31 year old point guard who’s not a great shooter and not a great floor general.

This isn't directed at you specifically, but in general people need to set stats aside for a moment and look at what were our biggest playoff deficiencies and did we address them or not.

We had nobody capable of running a PnR as handler/passer or shooter, I think DJ Aug and Holiday can both do that
We had nobody that could get to the rim other than Giannis OTHER than a wildly out of control Bledsoe, Holiday can do that
We had nobody that could run an offense when we were going through our 6 minute stretches of horror, where we just devolved into more an more ISO, I think DJ Aug and to an extent Holiday can do that
We had very few guys whose sphincters didn't pucker up to MAKE wide open three pointers, I think Forbes, DJ Aug, Nwora, Merrill, Portis, Holiday...well hopefully at least 3 of those guys can do that.

Lastly, while we had some really good defensive line ups, I think some kind of combo of Holiday, DDV, Middleton, Craig, Giannis is one of the best lock down 5 man units on the planet.

Now will Bud utilize these things, I have no idea, but Horst did his job and got the things we were missing added to the roster. And to save my own mind, now that Giannis, extended, I am going to assume we gave up a bunch of Kevin Porters, Omari Spellmans, Josh Harts, Damian Jones, Keven Looney types to do so (for those too lazy to look, those are the pick #30 guys the last couple of years).

[jakecronus8]

I get the playoff performance argument. I’m just saying I think there’s a decent amount of people out there who are going to look at what we gave up in the trade and either consciously or subconsciously expect more than we get on paper. I just hope he balls out in the playoffs and none of it matters in the end.

[tedbrogen]

I get the playoff performance argument. I’m just saying I think there’s a decent amount of people out there who are going to look at what we gave up in the trade and either consciously or subconsciously expect more than we get on paper. I just hope he balls out in the playoffs and none of it matters in the end.

Jrue doesn’t even have to ball out in the playoffs, he just has to be the same regular season Jrue. That’s something Bledsoe for whatever reason was incapable of the past three seasons.

It can be argued whether Bledsoe’s issue was mental or small sample size or whatever, but he certainly did not produce at his regular season levels. That had to be fixed.

[tedbrogen]

Double post

[TD75]

I said it last season in my prediction for the Bucks and I will say it again, I would never take a team that plays Eric Bledsoe 30+ minutes a night seriously as far as winning a championship. Good dude off the court, but glad as hell he's gone. Every season if he remained on the Bucks would have been a wasted season for Giannis.

Last season even when the Bucks were at their absolute peak, the whole time I was thinking in the back of my head We ain't winning **** when it matters as long as Bledsoe is on the roster. Yeah, he would look like a legit all-star on a random night in January against a 25 win team, but he wanted no part of the big stage.

We beat Boston in 2018 and we beat Toronto in 2019 if Bledsoe just simply doesn't play. And anyone who disputes that, I would question if you actually watched those series.

To not only get rid of Bledsoe, but to get rid of him in return for Holiday was huge.

The Bucks beat Toronto in 2019 if Bud does any of a lot of simple things right. One of those is play Hill more instead of Bledsoe.

[trwi7]

He's marginally a better shooter. I'm a playoffs=small sample kind of guy, for the most part.

Bled has played 48 playoff games, Holiday has played 30. That's a pretty decent sample size.

It's really not.

[trwi7]

I said it last season in my prediction for the Bucks and I will say it again, I would never take a team that plays Eric Bledsoe 30+ minutes a night seriously as far as winning a championship. Good dude off the court, but glad as hell he's gone. Every season if he remained on the Bucks would have been a wasted season for Giannis.

Last season even when the Bucks were at their absolute peak, the whole time I was thinking in the back of my head We ain't winning **** when it matters as long as Bledsoe is on the roster. Yeah, he would look like a legit all-star on a random night in January against a 25 win team, but he wanted no part of the big stage.

We beat Boston in 2018 and we beat Toronto in 2019 if Bledsoe just simply doesn't play. And anyone who disputes that, I would question if you actually watched those series.

To not only get rid of Bledsoe, but to get rid of him in return for Holiday was huge.

The Bucks beat Toronto in 2019 if Bud does any of a lot of simple things right. One of those is play Hill more instead of Bledsoe.

We also beat Toronto in 2019 if Giannis makes more than 28% of his free throws and doesn't turn it over 8 times in game 3 and makes more than half his free throws in addition to poor shooting from the field in games 5 and 6.

[TD75]

I said it last season in my prediction for the Bucks and I will say it again, I would never take a team that plays Eric Bledsoe 30+ minutes a night seriously as far as winning a championship. Good dude off the court, but glad as hell he's gone. Every season if he remained on the Bucks would have been a wasted season for Giannis.

Last season even when the Bucks were at their absolute peak, the whole time I was thinking in the back of my head We ain't winning **** when it matters as long as Bledsoe is on the roster. Yeah, he would look like a legit all-star on a random night in January against a 25 win team, but he wanted no part of the big stage.

We beat Boston in 2018 and we beat Toronto in 2019 if Bledsoe just simply doesn't play. And anyone who disputes that, I would question if you actually watched those series.

To not only get rid of Bledsoe, but to get rid of him in return for Holiday was huge.

The Bucks beat Toronto in 2019 if Bud does any of a lot of simple things right. One of those is play Hill more instead of Bledsoe.

We also beat Toronto in 2019 if Giannis makes more than 28% of his free throws and doesn't turn it over 8 times in game 3 and makes more than half his free throws in addition to poor shooting from the field in games 5 and 6.

Of course. I don't see though how one can equate though making shots (FTs) or avoiding offensive fouls (which are typically major part of the TOVs for Giannis) to simply deciding to use Hill instead of Bledsoe. The decision making leading to offensive fouls is maybe the only part of Giannis that he could have corrected.

Giannis did not decide to miss FTs or shoot poorly in a few games. Bud decided to ignore obvious corrections that should have been made.

[vollbc74]

Might have missed it in the thread somewhere, but when is Jrue eligible to sign an extension?

[LittleRooster]

Might have missed it in the thread somewhere, but when is Jrue eligible to sign an extension?

February


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[Turk Nowitzki]

He's way better than I thought. I was too used to Bledsoe's shenanigans.

[Shaffty]

just completely changes the dynamic of this team. Its gunna be a special run