Milwaukee Bucks’ Jrue Holiday Is Deep In Playmaking Bag

On one end of the court, Milwaukee Bucks’ guard Jrue Holiday is tasked with defending one of the NBA’s most physical and savvy wing scorers. On the other, he’s responsible for running the offense, getting everyone in the right spots, and creating shots for himself and others. It’s even more exhausting than it sounds.

In a recent anonymous NBA player poll released by The Athletic, Holiday received a lot of love from his peers as the best defender and the most underrated player. The latter trait likely results from his quiet demeanor on the court. He doesn’t talk junk or show up his opponents after he shuts them down. He just goes about his business play in and play out.

That could also be why he silently put up 16 assists in Game 1 against the Miami Heat and followed that up with 11 more in Game 2, giving him a whopping 27 dimes through the first two games of their first-round playoff series. And what dimes they are! More on his playmaking brilliance in a second.

First, we need to make a painful pitstop down memory lane.

In Holiday’s first two seasons with the Bucks, he’s followed up brilliant regular season efficiency with frustrating playoff droughts. After registering a career-high 57 percent effective field goal percentage in 2020-21 and matching that in 2021-22, he saw that plummet in the postseason to 46.1 and 43.2 percent, respectively.

That’s left a bit of an unfair stain on his Bucks’ playoff resumé. He’s often tasked with defending the opposing team’s best player, as he is in this series, and that daunting task drains his energy. Being the primary wing defender and carrying your team’s offensive load is incredibly difficult. Fortunately, that’s exactly what he’s done through the first two games against the Heat.

We go back to his playmaking brilliance now.

With Giannis Antetokounmpo only playing 11 minutes during the first two games due to his back injury and Khris Middleton’s minutes still limited, Holiday is burdened with an even larger responsibility in the offense.

And he’s responded exactly how Bucks’ fans hoped. Holiday controls the game like never before, creating quality shots for the role players on the Bucks.

Midway through the first quarter of Game 2, Holiday finds Jimmy Butler matched up on him. With Brook Lopez to his right and Bobby Portis to his left, he can decide which direction and screen he’ll use. He begins by probing right toward Lopez before quickly dribbling behind his back and using the Portis screen to his left.

Bam Adebayo promptly switches onto him, so he gently probes left before using a retreat dribble to the three-point line. This brings Adebayo up just a step before Holiday attacks the left lane line, hitting the Heat big man with a nifty spin move back to the middle and throwing a nice touch pass over the top of the defense to the mammoth Lopez.

Holiday’s assist percentage of 45 percent means nearly half of the shots his teammates make when he’s on the court are the direct result of one of his passes. Only one player eclipsed that mark in the regular season—Tyrese Haliburton at 45.8 percent.

His manipulation of the defense has been masterful to watch. With Miami aggressively overloading the strong side of the floor, watch how he uses that knowledge to his advantage and finds an open teammate in the corner for three.

With Holiday dribbling the rock on the right wing and Pat Connaughton preparing to set a ball screen, Bobby Portis’s man, Cody Zeller, is already cheating toward that side with two feet firmly in the paint. When Holiday fires the stunning one-handed fastball to Portis, Zeller’s balance is leaning away from him and he’s unable to recover. The pass gets threaded just past the outstretched arms of another Heat defender and right into the shot pocket for an easy catch-and-shoot trey.

Even when Milwaukee wasn’t making their threes in Game 1, Holiday continued to take advantage of Miami’s aggressive help defense. And when they are making the threes, oouuuuu-weeeee! Look out!

He’s much too strong and physical for every Heat guard and wing not named Jimmy Butler. He gets the switch and matchup he likes in the video above, before attacking to his left and getting deep into the paint. This attracts a plethora of help defenders and leaves Joe Ingles in the corner (he’s made 8 of his 13 threes in this series, by the way) for an open gym three.

The Heat put Butler on Holiday far more often in Game 2 than in Game 1. Still, he got the matchups he wanted and controlled the game with strength and pace.

When Antetokounmpo returns, Miami must make another difficult decision, possibly moving Butler onto the Bucks’ All-NBA talent. That should increase the times someone like Gabe Vincent or Caleb Martin defends Holiday.

This is the playmaking point guard Milwaukee needs to unlock their halfcourt offense in the playoffs. An offense, by the way, that has had no issue scoring through the first two games despite only making a quarter of their Game 1 threes. If Holiday continues to be assertive, intelligent and unselfish in his playmaking, Milwaukee’s offense should have no trouble continuing to put points on the board.