Josh Green is a 3-and-D Project to Replace Jrue Holiday on the New Orleans Pelicans

The calls for the New Orleans Pelicans to trade Jrue Holiday will only get stronger as his contract gets shorter. Green is a 3-and-D wing who could replace him.

Let’s get this out of the way first: I do not want the New Orleans Pelicans to trade Jrue Holiday. He’s one of the best shooting guards in the league and the heartbeat of this team.

But he’s an expensive, aging player (he turns 30 in June) on a team loaded with young talent that will need to get paid soon.

While most New Orleans Pelicans’ fans want the team to keep Holiday and let him lead this exciting possible contender, this may be the best time to get the most value in return for a player of Holiday’s caliber. It’s a tough call.

Next season he’s set to make $26.1 million and he has a player option for the 2021-22 season at $27 million that is hard to see him turning down.

This could make Holiday difficult to trade, which means the New Orleans Pelicans need to plan for life with and without Holiday.

The New Orleans Pelicans need to start thinking about drafting and developing a young shooting guard to learn under Holiday and eventually take over that starting role.

You may be thinking to yourself that’s why they drafted Nickeil Alexander-Walker with the 14th pick in the 2019 draft.  We’ll get to that later, when we discuss how Josh Green would fit with this roster.

There may be more pressing roster concerns with this team but if the New Orleans Pelicans did decide to trade Holiday they would be able to address those concerns then.

Adding a new center if they let Derrick Favors walk and a backup point guard in the same deal would certainly be possible.

Trade talk for Jrue can wait, let’s look at today’s prospect.

Josh Green

Green is a 6-foot-6 shooting guard from Australia with a 6-foot-10.25 wingspan. He played 30 games for Arizona this year (started all of them) and averaged 12.0 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.5 steals and shot 36.1% from 3-point range.

At 19.59 years old on the current scheduled date of the 2020 NBA Draft, Green is one of the younger players that will be selected. Pair that with already having played a full season at one of the better colleges in the NCAA and you’ve got a young player with high level playing experience.

While Green’s numbers may not seem that impressive, this season’s Arizona team had three players that are currently projected to be drafted (Nico Mannion, Zeke Nnaji and Green). That’s a lot of talent one one college team.

Green has strengths that will be even more evident once he’s in the NBA.