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New Orleans Pelicans Rank: Jrue Holiday Roundtable

By Matt Cianfrone

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Jan 18, 2015; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; New Orleans Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday (11) motions as he watches the game while inactive against the Toronto Raptors at Air Canada Centre. The Pelicans beat the Raptors 95-93. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

Where did the Pelicans miss Jrue most last year? 

Austin: Defensively. New Orleans struggled to find guys outside of him and Norris Cole to guard opposing point guards. Quincy Pondexter was left to try to guard Steph Curry in the playoffs and while Pondexter isn’t a bad defender, having him try to guard point guards is a potential disaster. They need Jrue to be able to bother opposing point guards, seeing as there are a plethora of awesome ones in the Western Conference.

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    • Nathan: Perimeter defense, by a long shot. Holiday is much more efficient on the offensive end, but Tyreke Evans excelled with the ball in his hands and put up some crazy numbers. Where Tyreke couldn’t replace Holiday was on the other side of the ball. Tyreke Evans, an average defender (I’m being very generous here), played next to Eric Gordon all season. Holiday has shown that he can at least mitigate the atrocities committed on the defensive end by Gordon, but that cover is not something Evans could provide. The result was a ridiculous amount of dribble penetration, and I believe it made the entire team look dramatically worse at defense than their actual talent level (see Asik, Omer). With Jrue healthy and harassing opposing guards, the Pelicans have the potential to go from a bottom 10 defense to a top 10 defense.

    Rick: Defending the point. Look, the point guard is by far the NBA’s deepest position. Each team has at least two point guards who can run the offense and has a unique skill set that’s very difficult to slow down. Having someone who can adapt to that and defend each of them is huge. Jrue can do that. However without him there, that has been swept onto Tyreke Evans or Quincy Pondexter, who just do not have the prowess on defense to slow down most of the elite guards such as Russell Westbrook and Stephen Curry and Tony Parker in the Western Conference. His defensive presence is necessary for this team to succeed and without it last year, that was a major struggle for New Orleans.

    Matt: Defensively. Opponents consistently got inside last season with dribble penetration and while Holiday won’t fix that all by himself he goes a long way in slowing it down.

    Next: More Aggressive?

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