Ranking the Roster: Jrue Holiday earns the bronze in the no. 3 slot

The man they call “The Jruth” has been a key center piece in the Bucks big three since he arrived in Milwaukee back in 2020. With his defensive mastery and offensive skill, it’s not a surprise to see Jrue Holiday take the no. 3 spot.

If any of you read my piece back in July on the roller coaster season that Holiday had, you know the positives and negatives of having him on this roster. When he is at his best, he is a defensive monster on-ball against other guards, while providing a good scoring punch to relieve pressure off of the other Bucks stars. He was an All-Star for the second time in his career and his career-high 51 point game against the Pacers in February is proof of that. However, when he is at his worst, he is an unreliable shooter that gets torched by larger scorers on the other end, even when playing with his typical defensive prowess. We saw that during the Miami series where Jimmy Butler owned Holiday every single game.

It may only get worse from here, at least on the defensive end, with Holiday just turning 33 in June. There were suggestions by some that Holiday should have been moved to re-tool this aging Bucks core. The only problem with that is you aren’t going to get a player who has all the positives that Holiday brings at the same level and what trading partner is going to want to take on a $37 million player option for next season?

Holiday can still be a productive and valuable player for the Bucks. He averaged 19.2 points—the most he’s ever had in his short Bucks career—along with 5 rebounds, 7.3 assists, and 1.1 steals per game. The main thing for Holiday is to keep up that level of play during the postseason. He can’t have massive drop-offs in shooting and scoring like he did this past post season (19.2 points to 17.8, field goal percentage of 47.9% to 40%, and three point percentage of 38.4% to 28.6%) if the Bucks want to win another title with this group.

Once postseason basketball arrives, what type of load will Holiday be carrying in the rotation?

And then there were two...

Editors note: a technical issue prevented this article from displaying on the home page for over an hour, so we’ll leave the poll open a few extra hours longer than usual.