Two-time NBA champion Jrue Holiday will take on a new role next season after being traded from the Boston Celtics to the Portland Trail Blazers. On a team where he’ll be the oldest of everyone by several years, Holiday will naturally become a mentor for a Blazers team that is in the midst of a rebuild around a young core of guys.
When asked about who served as a mentor for Holiday early on in his career, he recalled one specific player who always gave him a hard time in his rookie year.
“Yeah, one was Andre Iguodala,” Holiday said during his introductory press conference. “He was a jerk. My rookie year, he was just on you — or he was on me about a lot.”
Holiday’s rookie season with the Philadelphia 76ers was a disappointment considering the team had just made the playoffs thanks to a 25-year-old Iguodala in the midst of his prime. The Sixers won just 27 games during Holiday’s rookie season after drafting him 17th overall in 2009. In retrospect, Holiday understands why the four-time champion was so hard on him.
“I didn’t really understand why until later, he obviously saw something in me that I guess I hadn’t seen yet,” Holiday said. “Just constantly being on me and harping on me about being consistent, and the things that I have to do are super important.”
Holiday went on to mention another veteran that helped him early in his career.
“I had Elton Brand … I think everybody knows Elton Brand’s game,” Holiday said. “His career has been amazing and what he’s doing in Philly. I also had Aaron McKie as a coach. He was kind of like my player coach who really instilled in me a lot of hard work. Because we were the same position, he coached me up a lot on how to be solid as not just as a player but as a human.”
Holiday said Iguodala would make sure he was locked in at all times. “You have creativity, and you might want to try things if it’s defensively or offensively,” Holiday said, “and he would always tell me, ‘Be silent.'”
Iguodala helped Holiday choose when to pick his spots on both sides of the ball, whether it meant being aggressive to try to get a turnover on defense or getting his own bucket on offense. It may have been frustrating in the moment, but Iguodala’s résumé as an All-Defensive player helped Holiday turn into one of the best on-ball defenders of this generation.
Now, Holiday will serve a similar role for the Blazers. With the likes of Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson, Holiday can impart his years of wisdom on those two young guards to hopefully help their development. Henderson specifically could learn a lot from both Holiday and Damian Lillard as he enters a pivotal year in his career after falling short of expectations in his first two years in the league.
“You can tell they love the game of basketball,” Holiday said of Henderson and Sharpe. “They love to hoop, you can tell they give 110% every time they play. So I’m super excited to — if it’s mentor, then mentor them. Be able to go out here and show the world not just my talent but theirs. Just from playing against them, they’re going to have a long road ahead of them, they’re going to have very long careers.”
It’ll be a change of pace for Holiday, who has been on championship contending teams for the last five years, but his veteran leadership should significantly help the Blazers take another jump in their rebuild.