Game point, Sixers down one. Final seconds melting away. James Harden with the ball in his hands, Jrue Holiday in a defensive stance.
Such a delicious matchup, on so many levels. Harden is an elite scorer, Holiday an elite defender – “the head of our snake on defense,” as his Milwaukee Bucks teammate, Brook Lopez, said.
“I don’t know another guard that is a better defensive player than him,” Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers said before the teams met Thursday night in the Wells Fargo Center. “I would not want to see him every night.”
Another layer to the drama: Harden (obviously) represents his team’s present – maybe too much of it, given Joel Embiid’s play out of the gate this season. Holiday, meanwhile, is the Ghost of Sixers Past.
And one more: The Sixers are looking to establish a new identity after retooling their roster yet again in the offseason, while the Bucks’ identity, forged during their 2020 title run, remains intact. And never mind that starting small forward Khris Middleton and two other rotational pieces, Pat Connaughton and Joe Ingles, missed Thursday’s game – their season opener, the Sixers’ home opener – because of injury.
The Bucks are who they are, and that is something very good indeed. They sprinkle shooters around the wondrous Giannis Antetokounmpo, run their stuff and guard like hell. Holiday, 32 years old and in his 14th season, is integral to all that. In his first two seasons with Milwaukee, he shot the ball better than at any point in his career. That’s a product of the work he put in and the defensive attention Giannis commands, as well as Middleton’s playmaking, which coach Mike Budenholzer described as “very unique.”
“And,” Budenholzer said of Holiday, “I think he’s in a good place.”
In every sense. Drafted 17th overall by the Sixers in 2009, he spent his first four seasons with them, making the lone All-Star appearance of his career in ‘13. He was then dealt, shockingly, to New Orleans just a few months later, as Sam Hinkie began The Process with a bang.
Feel free to speculate what might have happened had Holiday and Co. (Andre Iguodala, Thaddeus Young, Evan Turner, Nikola Vucevic, Lou Williams, et al.) remained in Philadelphia. Holiday, seated next to veteran guard George Hill (another former Sixer) in the visitors’ locker room before Thursday’s game, declined to do so.
“It’s been near 10 years,” he said. “I think at this point I’ve heard it enough: ‘Man, if they would have kept you all together.’ And it’s like, they didn’t, so I don’t think about it anymore.”
He’s forged his own path, making one of the NBA’s All-Defensive teams four of the last five seasons while providing some signature playoff moments at that end of the floor. There was his strip of the Suns’ Devin Booker, followed by an on-the-run lob to Antetokounmpo in the ‘20 Finals, and two separate defensive gems against Boston’s Marcus Smart in the dying moments of Game Five of last year’s Eastern Conference finals, a series Milwaukee ultimately lost.
Rivers went so far as to compare Holiday to Sixers Hall of Famer Maurice Cheeks, not only as a defender but as an opportunistic scorer.
“They both do this thing that very few guards do,” said Rivers, who enjoyed a 13-year career as an NBA point guard himself. “They make shots in the middle of a game that you don’t even notice. They both have this ability to stop runs. Maurice Cheeks, he’d have eight points in a game, and you’d think those were the eight most important points in the game. A team is making a 6-0 run, and Cheeks would just come down (and make a) pull-up jumpshot, and then go back to his own business of moving the ball. And Jrue kind of senses the game in the same way.”
But Holiday could barely make a shot of any kind Thursday, going 2-for-15 and finishing with six points. No matter.
“I can do a lot of other things,” he said.
And had to, given that Harden poured in 16 of his 31 points in the fourth quarter, as the Sixers erased a 13-point deficit to take a late lead. Again and again Harden was able to exploit switches and hit floaters and short jumpers, and it escaped no one’s notice that the Sixers made their run with Embiid on the bench. He returned with 5:38 left but went scoreless in the second half, finishing with 15 points on horrid 6-for-21 shooting. (After the game Rivers said Embiid was still getting back into shape after struggling with plantar fasciitis in the offseason. Embiid, for his part, left the arena without addressing reporters.)
The Bucks missed 14 of 19 shots while being outscored 25-17 in the fourth quarter, and managed exactly three field goals in the last 10:05. But Wesley Matthews buried the 3-pointer with 23.8 seconds left that put them ahead, 89-88, bringing us back to that lovely Harden-Holiday confrontation.
“They do a great job (with) end-of-game stuff,” Budenholzer said of the Sixers, mentioning a Tyrese Maxey isolation play or an Embiid-Harden two-man game as possibilities.
But with 9.9 seconds left Maxey, inbounding from the left sideline after Embiid’s pass had been deflected out, fired to Harden, deep on the left wing. Harden took three dribbles around Holiday and a second defender, Grayson Allen, shouldered Holiday to create space and fired up what was described on the official play-by-play sheet as a four-foot “Driving Floating Bank Shot” from the left of the lane.
The attempt clanked off the back iron, Milwaukee rebounded and Lopez made a free throw at the other end to account for the 90-88 final score.
When asked about the Sixers’ final play, Holiday had to stop and think for a moment: Now which one was that again? Then it registered.
“They tried to get the switch,” he said. “Grayson did a good job hedging (Maxey’s brush screen), and I got an opportunity to get back in front of (Harden). At that point, you’ve just got to put your hands up, show your body and obviously leave it up to the ref. So I think I did a good job.”
The disclaimer being that nobody really stops a great scorer. The best an NBA defender can do is make it as difficult as possible, and hope for the best. That’s what Holiday had done, per usual.
Harden, for his part, second-guessed himself.
“It wasn’t a great look,” he said. “It was a good look. It could’ve been better. Could’ve taken my time a little bit more. I think I had a little bit more time to where I could’ve made a second movement and got a better shot. But I’ll take it.”
At night’s end the Bucks filed into their locker room, dapping up their assistant coaches and support personnel as they went. Holiday, like most of his teammates, betrayed no outward emotion. Someone else would have to frame the night’s drama. To him, this was just the first of 82 games (and likely many more). To him, it was just another day at the office.