Pelicans playing Jrue Holiday trade possibilities out of existence

Clearly starting to show signs of progress on the court, removing Jrue Holiday from the picture now only hurts this team’s ability to learn how to win.

After tumbling to the bottom of the Western Conference to start the season, the trade vultures started making circles around the Pelicans roster, most often trying to pluck Jrue Holiday from the tumbling New Orleans lockerroom.

Things have started to get a whole lot better for the New Orleans Pelicans, despite the fact that their 9-23 record is not where they’d hoped to be at this point in the year

Winners of three of their last four with quality road victories over the Minnesota Timberwolves, Portland Trail Blazers, and finally on Christmas Day against the Denver Nuggets, the wins are really starting to make a statement about what the rest of the season holds Pelicans.

Over the last four games, Jrue has averaged 21 points, 5.3 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2.3 steals per contest, while hitting 36.7% of his 7.5 three-point attempts to give this team a star veteran push.

As of now, thanks in part to the veteran leadership of Jrue Holiday, the return of Derrick Favors, and a defensive renaissance thanks to Jeff Bzdelik, New Orleans sits just 5.5 games back of the eighth seed Western Conference Playoffs.

Though he struggled out of the gate, Jrue Holiday has been this team’s lead guard and key veteran all year long, helping a young roster navigate the league’s hardest schedule for the first two-plus months of their season.

So far on the season, Holiday averages 19.7 points, 6.5 assists, 5.1 rebounds, and 1.8 steals per contest, as the 29-year-old guard makes 43.5% of his shots from the floor while hitting 34.1% of his looks from three.

One of the elite defensive players in the league, Jrue Holiday allows opponents to shoot just 41.4% on 12.6 attempts per game. That stat is telling, especially when considering Holiday is usually tasked with bodying the opposing team’s best guard.

However, it’s the deeper metrics that better represent Jrue’s impact on the team. Over the course of his seven seasons in New Orleans, the Pelicans have been 2.2 points better when Holiday is on the court and 8.6 points worse when Jrue checks out.

This season, Jrue has a box plus/minus of just +0.4 so far, but that total keeps improving as the Pelicans play better and better basketball. He’s also posting a meager 0.7 value above replacement, but that figure jumps to 6.1 over his 7 years in New Orleans.

Overall, Holiday continues to help this young Pelicans team find ways to win games, or at least in the nine games they’ve actually been able to steal. Be it a big shot or forcing a crucial turnover, Jrue is a guy who’s been on time for the Pelicans when they’ve needed him most.

While people outside the organization might want the Pelicans to move Jrue Holiday, it’s hard to find a logic to the move for New Orleans.

Seemingly constructed without regard for the roster plan put together by David Griffin and Trajan Langdon in the front office, the team continues to receive pressure from external sources to move off of Holiday.

When the New Orleans Pelicans made their opening statements on the 2019-2020 NBA season, Jrue Holiday was the focal point of narratives laid-out by both David Griffin and Alvin Gentry. Just about a month-and-a-half into the campaign, national media outlets began demanding Holiday be shipped to another, more win-now oriented team.

These outlets pushing for trades somehow don’t want to consider how important it will be for the organization to measure how well Holiday pairs with Zion Williamson upon the rookie’s return.

When thinking about Jrue Holiday and Williamson together, it’s impossible not to think about the shot-creating possibilities for this team, plus the spacing that the combo will bring to this team’s offensive attack.

The same outlets who were pushing for the Pelicans to make all their future decisions with Zion in mind have suddenly changed face and want the organization to hemorrhage its veterans.

Over and over again, Jrue has stated his interest in remaining a member of the Pelicans for the long haul; if he wants to be here and he helps this team win games, it would be logical to keep him in the picture.

With a 5-yr., $126 million contract that extends through the end of the 2022 season if he accepts his $26.5 million player option after 2021, Jrue Holiday is signed with the Pelicans for at least the next couple of seasons.

It just seems more logical for the savvy veteran to help a talented young core continue to grow; after all, this team brought eight new faces onto their twelve-man roster to start the 2019-2020 season.

One of the best 25-or-so players in the league, Jrue Holiday has been a crucial part of this team’s development. Jrue makes all of the players around him better, so it’s kind of shocking that the Pelicans have stumbled this far into the season, but with Zion’s eventual return, things are looking up in the Big Easy.