Jrue Holiday leading Blazers to hot start after many questioned Portland’s acquisition

When the Portland Trail Blazers traded for Jrue Holiday, and the $104 million remaining on his contract that is on the books through his age-37 season, few people regarded it as anything more than a very expensive mentorship for Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe. 

But the Blazers saw it as something more. General manager Joe Cronin declared this year “winning time” and saw the Holiday acquisition as a means to that lofty end. He had done it before, after all. Holiday put Boston over the top. Ditto for Milwaukee. 

Now here he is, doing it again in Portland. 

Nobody is saying the Blazers are going to compete for, let alone win, a championship any time soon. But along with the 6-2 Bulls, they are the surprise story of the young season at 5-3 with wins over the Lakers, Warriors, Nuggets and Thunder. I had them at No. 5 in the latest Power Rankings and they have earned every inch of that recognition. 

Holiday isn’t doing this alone. But that was the point. Portland already had good players comprising a top-five defense over the latter third of last season. Something, or someone, just had to put them over the top, relatively speaking. Holiday, thought to be on the decline after a down campaign with Boston last year, is doing that and more with his highest scoring output (17.6 PPG) since his last season with the Bucks and 7.6 assists, his best mark in over a half decade. 

It’s arguable whether Holiday has been Portland’s best player so far. That honor probably belongs to Deni Avdija, who’s on an All-Star track. But this is Holiday’s team. The winning culture and confidence pulsating through Portland right now is no coincidence. Holiday brings that with him everywhere he goes. That and his defensive prowess, which is still elite, are like carry-on bags. But it’s been his scoring aggression and overall license to initiate offense that has made what became an increasingly peripheral role in Boston feel like a forgotten time. 

With the Celtics, Holiday was support staff for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. He spaced the floor. Played defense. Made plays and shots when they came his way, but even those contributions eventually became a secondary schtick to Derrick White. In Portland, Holiday is back in the pilot’s seat of a plane that is flying at the league’s second-fastest pace. 

Pay particular attention to that 11.6 number. That’s more drives than Giannis Antetokounmpo. As a unit, the Blazers are averaging 60 drives per game, tied with Charlotte for tops in the league. Avdija’s 17.8 drives per game rank fourth league-wide. 

Now pair that with Portland’s defense, which is forcing a league-high 20.8 turnovers per game, which is then turning into 24.6 points per game (second only to OKC’s 24.7), and you come to a common theme: Pressure. 

“I feel like the way we play, the energy that we come with every game, it’s not going to be an easy night for anyone who plays against us,” Holiday said after Portland overcame a 22-point deficit to beat OKC. “That’s part of our identity, to make it tough on teams.” 

Indeed, this is a team that attacks. And they do it together. Pressuring and swarming to the ball with packs of defenders led by Holiday and Toumani Camara, taking it from opponents, and getting out in transition — where they spend 23.5% of their possessions (90th percentile league wide, per Synergy) while scoring 18.9 fast break points per game, the fourth-highest mark in the league. 

The following clip is a perfect distillation of the two-way pressure Portland puts on you. Drive into a crowd, get stripped, push the other way, make a bunch of quick, decisive passes that ends in a lob dunk for Donovan Clingan (who, incidentally, is the backend protector that allows Portland to apply all this pressure on the perimeter). 

That kind of passing flow is not a one off for these Blazers. It’s what they do. They’ve gone from bottom 10 in passes per game last year to top 10 this year, and they are passes that slowly increase the pressure of a possession. 

That’s what is really setting Portland apart. It’s not just that they drive a lot; it’s that they pass out of those drives 27.1 times a game, the highest mark in the league. They don’t rely on one-man attacks from start to finish as much as they do inclusive, chain-reaction sequences. Drive. Cut. Pass. Each action stressing the increasingly leveraged defense until it finally breaks the seas part. When it works, it looks like this. 

Half-court possessions, combined with all the time they spend in transition, is how Portland is taking 33.1% of its shots at the rim, second only to the Bulls’ 36.5. Add in the 42.1 3-pointers a game, which ranks fifth league-wide, and over 75% of Portland’s total shots are coming from either inside the restricted area or outside the 3-point line. 

Cleaning the Glass tracks who gets the best shots from the best spots based on location-specific league averages, and only the Bulls have a healthier shot diet than the Blazers. Sure, they could stand to make a bit more of those shots (their 52.0 effective field-goal percentage ranks 24th, per CTG), but shooting and their own turnovers on offense are the only things that resemble a flaw on this team right now, so let’s not get too picky. 

Besides, the Blazers are so good defensively and create so many extra possessions with turnovers and offensive rebounds (Clingan is second only to Jalen Duren with 35 so far) that even with the inconsistent shooting they are currently scoring more points per game than all but six teams. Put that together with a top-eight defense, and, well, you’ve got yourself a pretty damn good team. A team that is a lot closer to competing for real with the big boys than the many critics of the Holiday deal ever would’ve guessed. 

So kudos to Cronin and company for taking the swing on Holiday. Again, he’s probably not the best player on this team (Advija is kind of awesome, so is Jerami Grant, and if Sharpe ever gets his shooting dialed, watch out), but he is without question the most important right now. He has taken a talented group and turned it into an actual good team that has started out 5-3 against by far the toughest schedule in the league. That’s no small feat, even as early season results go. 

Does any of this mean we should now be holding the Blazers to a playoffs-or-bust standard? Absolutely not. The Western Conference is a bloodbath. Frankly, if this Portland team does grab a top-six seed, it’ll qualify as a small miracle. 

But make no mistake, the Blazers can play with, and beat, anyone on any night. Holiday is right. You are going to have your hands full when you step on the court with this team, and there’s every reason to think they will only get stronger. Henderson is yet to play. If you look beyond this season, Damian Lillard is back in the fold, and a Lillard-Holiday backcourt is a pretty damn intriguing tandem.