One of the things ESPN’s Brian Windhorst associates with Jrue Holiday is the point guard’s defense of Damian Lillard in the New Orleans Pelicans’ sweep of the Portland Trail Blazers in the 2018 playoffs.
Windhorst recalled this series while talking about Holiday on a trade deadline-focused edition of the Lowe Post on Monday to describe just why a team would want him.
“If they made Jrue Holiday available, there would be a bidding war,” Windhorst said.
Yet Windhorst and podcast host Zach Lowe were unsure of the Pelicans’ plans for the guard.
“I don’t really know what’s going to happen with Jrue Holiday,” Lowe said. “He’s the sexiest name that is allegedly on the market; I just can’t tell how much on the market he really is.”
Windhorst also seemed to think the Pelicans aren’t looking to trade Holiday. New Orleans attributed early-season struggles to their youth, Windhorst said, and Derrick Favors re-joining the team in mid-December helped stabilize them.
If anything, Windhorst thinks, they’re looking to add a veteran, not subtract one.
But if the Pelicans do announce they’ll listen to offers, there would be immediate interest.
Windhorst and Lowe named the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets as specific teams that Holiday would make sense on.
“If I’m Miami and I traded for Jrue Holiday by Thursday, I’m thinking I have a chance to win the East this year,” Windhorst said.
With that said, neither were sure how trade packages would work out and what the Pelicans would see as a helpful move for the present along with the future.
With the entire New Orleans ensemble showing good ball handling abilities and high IQ, Lowe noted, Holiday is a great fit who doesn’t demand high usage. However, as he’s 29, there’s logic in New Orleans flipping him if they could receive multiple first-round picks and a plug-and-play role player to fit in with the younger corps.
Windhorst leaned toward keeping Holiday, qualifying his speculation with “by the way, I would not trade him.”
Holiday has two years left on his contract with the Pelicans, the second of which is a player option worth more than $26 million.
With New Orleans creeping toward the Memphis Grizzlies’ eighth seed and the trade deadline on Thursday, the team will have to decide quickly if they’re going to be sellers — and at what cost it would take.
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