I’m back for Chapter 2 of this series! If you haven’t already, go back and read Chapter 1, where I first broke down weak link theory and its application to the last three Bucks starting point guards. Then, I took the reader on a trip down memory lane to 2018 when Milwaukee became a truly dominant team, statistically analysing how they became so dominant. Finally, I discussed Eric Bledsoe’s severe offensive struggles in the playoffs, which ultimately led to his ouster. In Chapter 2, I’ll discuss Bledsoe’s replacement,
Jrue Holiday, and his offensive struggles in the postseason. I’ll also statistically analyse Milwaukee’s title and how it compares with other NBA champions, before finally debating if the trade for Holiday was really a success. Enjoy!
Weak link #2: Jrue Holiday
Jrue Holiday was supposed to pick up the same defensive thread that Eric Bledsoe left while providing a more efficient shooting option. Now, was Holiday more impactful than Bledsoe on the whole? It’s hard to say he wasn’t. Holiday’s regular season stats were pretty damn good at 18.5 PPG, 6.8 APG, 4.7 RPG, and 2.0 steals/blocks per game, while shooting 49.5% from the field and 39.5% from three on 5.3 attempts per game. At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that Eric Bledsoe’s regular season stats wearing Bucks green (plus the half season in Phoneix because I couldn’t filter it out) weren’t too shabby either: 16.3 PPG, 5.3 APG, 4.4 RPG, and 2.0 steals/blocks per game, while shooting 47.8% from the field and 33.9% from three on 4.5 attempts per game. But the regular season was never Bledsoe’s problem; the reason he was traded was because his shooting efficiency dropped precipitously in the playoffs. Well, guess what? Jrue Holiday’s playoff efficiency ended up being just as bad:
| Statistic | Eric Bledsoe | Jrue Holiday |
|---|---|---|
| Playoff games | 31 | 40 |
| PPG | 13.1 | 17.9 |
| APG | 4.6 | 7.9 |
| RPG | 3.9 | 5.8 |
| SPG | 1.1 | 1.6 |
| TPG | 2.3 | 2.6 |
| FG% | 41.10% (11.8 attempts) | 39.60% (17.7 attempts) |
| 3P% | 25.40% (4.1 attempts) | 30.40% (6.6 attempts) |
| 2P% | 49.40% (7.8 attempts) | 45.10% (11.2 attempts) |
| FT% | 73.20% (3.1 attempts) | 75.00% (2.5 attempts) |
| TS% | 49.40% | 46.90% |
I understand the defensive responsibilities Bledsoe and Holiday took on in the postseason, but that can’t be the sole reason for this level of poor shooting. I think it’s fair to conclude that had both starting point guards shot more efficiently when it mattered most, the butterfly effect could have been substantial when considering how dominant those Bucks teams were in most other areas. At the same time, it’s worth acknowledging that Horst acquired Holiday to be an offensive improvement from Bledsoe in these key moments, and he did not live up to that, period.
I even became curious and isolated Jrue’s three-point shooting (just to look at one shot distance) to see if there was some key difference in the type of threes he was taking between the regular season and the playoffs that might help to explain this drop-off; the answer is no, there really wasn’t. For example, during the 2020-21 regular season, Holiday shot 37.9% on catch-and-shoot threes with a 14.1% shot frequency; in the playoffs of that same season, he shot 31.5% with a 13.9% frequency. The same shot and (virtually) same shot frequency, and the percentage declined a fair amount in the playoffs. Of course, there’s always the fatigue angle with core guys playing more minutes in the postseason, but that applies to every team.
Therefore, I wondered: Although most fans (me included) instinctively look back on the Holiday trade and view it as a success because the Bucks won a title—and as Brian Windhorst’s famous saying goes, “when you win, it means never having to say you’re sorry”—are we sure the trade elevated the team to the level of a champion? Or, is it more likely that the 2020-21 team—while continuing to play the same dominant brand of basketball that continually put Milwaukee, at the very least, in the championship conversation—caught some breaks other Bucks teams may not have during some of the previous (and following) postseasons, and won a title, which masks the fact that this “blockbuster trade” actually wasn’t all that additive? And to be clear, I think there were some material differences in the title team, particularly in mental fortitude and strategy, that differentiated it from teams prior; winning a ‘chip obviously can’t be reduced to “catching breaks.” My point, however, is that it’s up for debate how much Jrue impacted these differences. Let’s investigate.
Analysing Milwaukee’s title (and Jrue Holiday’s role in it)
As the table below shows, Milwaukee won the title in 2020-21 with a statistical profile far less impressive than that of the 2018-19 season—both in the regular season and the playoffs—reinforcing the sense that the team’s inability to beat the Raptors may haunt them as a significant missed opportunity. Elsewhere, the regular season profile of the 2019-20 season sticks out on this table; that team was dominating before Covid halted the season. They ended that shortened regular season with a 56-17 (!) record. On the other hand, the playoff profile of that team, although it appears similar to the previous season’s playoff profile on paper, is less credible because the sample size is substantially reduced (five-game loss in the second round). Man, it still would’ve been nice to see that team play in front of real fans, though. Granted, it’s certainly no guarantee that the Bucks would have beaten the Heat, who went all the way to the “bubble” NBA Finals, in a typical environment, especially seeing as they lost in a gentleman’s sweep.
| Season | Offence (RS) | Defence (RS) | Offence (PS) | Defence (PS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 (Holiday) | 116.5 (5th) | 110.7 (9th) | 112.2 (11th) | 106.8 (1st) |
| 2019-20 (Bledsoe) | 111.9 (8th) | 102.5 (1st) | 109.1 (8th) | 107.3 (4th) |
| 2018-19 (Bledsoe) | 113.5 (4th) | 104.9 (1st) | 110.7 (4th) | 101.9 (1st) |
With all of that in mind, the question that might dawn on you is, “did the Bucks get lucky winning that championship?” More specifically, “is winning the title with the top playoff defence and 11th-best offence out of the norm?” The first and most obvious point to make clear is that yes, the higher a team ranks in both categories, the more their chances of winning increase. But teams can also win championships “on balance.” What I mean by “on balance” is that even if a team severely struggles on one end (like the Bucks did on offence in the title season), their proficiency on the other end can save them. In the 2020-21 playoffs, the Bucks were first on offence but 10 spots away from first on defence, thus 10 spots away from “perfect.” This is comparable to the Raptors in the 2018-19 playoffs being six spots away from first on offence and three spots away on defence, which equals nine spots away from “perfect.”
NBA champion table
| Season and champion | Offence | Defence | Spots from “perfect” |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25: Oklahoma City | 114.3 (5th) | 105.7 (1st) | 4 |
| 2023-24: Boston | 116.8 (4th) | 108.2 (3rd) | 5 |
| 2022-23: Denver | 118.2 (1st) | 110.2 (4th) | 3 |
| 2021-22: Golden State | 114.5 (4th) | 109.6 (6th) | 8 |
| 2020-21: Milwaukee | 112.2 (11th) | 106.8 (1st) | 10 |
| 2019-20: Los Angeles | 115.6 (2nd) | 108.7 (6th) | 6 |
| 2018-19: Toronto | 109.8 (7th) | 104.2 (4th) | 9 |
| 2017-18: Golden State | 112.7 (1st) | 102.0 (1st) | – |
| 2016-17: Golden State | 118.2 (2nd) | 105.3 (2nd) | 2 |
| 2015-16: Cleveland | 114.6 (1st) | 105.2 (8th) | 7 |
In short, Milwaukee won the championship despite a horrid playoff offence because of their elite defence. Jrue was a key reason both of those happened. Had the Bucks had, say, even the third-best defence, they likely wouldn’t have won a title that year. But to answer the above question, I do not think the Bucks were “lucky” in winning that championship. However, while that team’s statistical profile was in the realm of other champions, it does appear to be at least a mild outlier that required some breaks to go their way. The reason I make that point is not to diminish the title in any way whatsoever; the “asterisk ring” conversation is reductive and silly. I say that to make the point that winning another title with an outlier profile, by its very nature, would be highly unlikely.
To win again, the team needed to move their profile towards the standard of around 4-7 spots from “perfect,” as the table indicates. Unfortunately, Milwaukee’s statistical playoff profile moved further away (from the 10 spots from “perfect” that they won with in 2021) over the next two regular seasons and playoffs—as the table at the bottom of this paragraph shows—and accordingly, the team did not advance past the second round. Jrue continued to be an offensive weak link, shooting poorly in both campaigns.
| Season | Offence (RS) | Defence (RS) | Offence (PS) | Defence (PS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | 114.3 (15th) | 110.9 (4th) | 114.2 (6th) | 119.0 (15th) |
| 2021-22 | 114.3 (3rd) | 111.1 (14th) | 103.4 (15th) | 102.7 (1st) |
Before this section concludes, I should acknowledge the possibility of outside factors contributing to Jrue’s shooting struggles in Milwaukee, such as injuries to Khris Middleton in 2022 and Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2023, which theoretically may have expanded his role to a degree he wasn’t comfortable with. At the same time, considering the stats I reference in the next section from the 2021 playoffs—when the big three were healthy for (basically) the entire run and Jrue still shot very poorly—I don’t know how much credence to give that argument.
I suppose you could argue that the way Boston dramatically shrank Jrue’s offensive responsibilities, asking him to play a lot as a corner shooter and dunker-spot operator, it shows that he is capable of upping his postseason efficiency in a specific role (49.8% from the field and 38.9% from three on 5.2 attempts per game over two playoff runs). However, the Celtics were one of the few NBA teams that could realistically afford to have a player earning $30m per season be their fourth or fifth option due to 1) excellent team construction and 2) the ginormous tax bill their owners were willing to pay (for a few seasons, at least).
The final verdict
As far as declaring the Holiday trade was a “success” or not, I struggle to answer definitively either way. I suppose I would call it a success on the logic that 1) the theory of how Jrue would elevate the team worked (to a certain degree) in the regular season, and 2) the trade allowed the team to maintain its defensive identity, which had proven to be a prosperous formula that had yet to translate to a title, and then it finally did. Some may think 2) is me trying too hard to flatter the front office, but I consider this extremely valuable. If I were to make my best case as to why the trade was a success, I would emphasise that acquiring Jrue didn’t rock what was an incredibly smooth-sailing boat (dumb analogy, but run with me here). Now, Jrue was acquired to streamline the boat, which I don’t think he did; however, there was no realistic scenario in which the boat would sink with Jrue, which, crucially, differentiates this trade from the one that followed it.
On the other hand, I could entertain the idea that the trade was not a success on the logic that 1) the way Jrue shot in the playoffs, it seems entirely possible that the Bucks still would’ve won that title with Bledsoe anyway, and 2) if Horst was mortgaging the future, he needed to shoot higher than Holiday for a player who he was all but certain would not bring the same issues that Bledsoe did. Granted, 2) is a very tall order. Regardless, the Bucks had a formula that continued to put them at least on the fringes of the championship conversation before they acquired Holiday—the same formula that ultimately won out with Holiday on the team—but the stats don’t necessarily indicate that Holiday “tipped the scale” in a way that Bledsoe could not have.
Certainly, Jrue’s defence in the 2021 playoffs was elite and, it’s fair to say, was probably better than Eric’s in prior playoff campaigns. To what degree was it better? Well, that’s always going to be difficult to measure quantitatively, at least. Eric made consecutive NBA All-Defensive teams with the Bucks in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons; he was no slouch on that front. Looking at advanced stats, Holiday’s defensive box plus/minus (DBPM)—defined by Basketball Reference as a box score estimate of the defensive points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team—in those playoffs was 1.2; Bledsoe’s playoff DBPM the year prior was also 1.2. By and large, I would say both players made somewhat similar contributions on defence. That said, I can’t act like I don’t intuitively feel like Holiday was a notch above and, crucially, a more impactful playmaker—the “valley-oop” being the most notable example of that.
On offence, Holiday assisted more than Bledsoe ever did in any playoffs he was a part of with the Bucks. Jrue averaged 8.7 dimes per game in the 2021 postseason; Eric was at an average of 5.9 in the playoffs prior. It should also be mentioned that Holiday made a number of clutch shots in that playoff run. However, the facts are that Jrue shot 40.6% from the field in those playoffs and 48.2% on true shooting. Per Basketball Reference, the average shooting percentage in those playoffs was 46.2%; the average true shooting percentage was 57.1%. Holiday just had to be better than that as the team’s third-highest paid player. And yes, by the same token, I also believe that Milwaukee would’ve had the same unsuccessful results in the two seasons after that with Bledsoe as well. But the key difference is that if Horst stuck with Bledsoe, the team wouldn’t have been out two firsts and two swaps. Fans will never know the opportunity cost of parting ways with those picks and whether acquiring a different player than Holiday could have prevented the need for further major transactions, which then would have afforded Horst a boatload more flexibility than he has now.
Check back in next week for Chapter 3, the final of this series, where I’ll break down the brief Damian Lillard era in Milwaukee, analysing the logic behind the move, what the stats (and the eye test) tell us about how translatable Lillard’s game truly is to winning at the highest level, the role injuries played in his two years in the Cream City, and if a trade for a “lesser player” might have resulted in more success for Milwaukee.