ESPN:jrue holiday season is now as he is extended to trade..

Throughout a significant portion of this intense, back-and-forth NBA Finals series, Jrue Holiday’s shots have just not fallen. That all changed on Saturday night during Game 5, when the former All-Star point guard defied everyone’s expectations and spurred the biggest of comeback wins.

 

Even before the 2020–21 season began, the Milwaukee Bucks placed a huge wager on Jrue Holiday. The team thought he was the final piece, along with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton, to complete the championship puzzle. They valued the 30-year-old point guard so highly that they mortgaged their future for him, offering him a $160 million, four-year contract extension the day after he landed in Wisconsin.

His arrival in November meant two things: Giannis was sticking around – on the largest contract in NBA history no less (five years, $228m) – and the Bucks title window was officially wide open. Anything less than a ‘chip over the next few years with this ‘Big Three’ would be seen as something of a colossal failure or worse, a waste of Giannis’ prime, whatever was going on in New York or Los Angeles.

 

Antetokounmpo was a reigning two-time MVP and Defensive Player of the Year heading into this season. Middleton a two-time All-Star. In effect, it’s now, soon, or never.

 

Milwaukee know better than anyone a player like Giannis comes along only once in a generation, or even longer than that. This is a ball club without a championship for 50 years, when the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, selected first by the Bucks in the 1969 draft, led the team to its only ever title in 1971.

 

Antetokounmpo was a reigning two-time MVP and Defensive Player of the Year heading into this season. Middleton a two-time All-Star. In effect, it’s now, soon, or never.

 

Milwaukee know better than anyone a player like Giannis comes along only once in a generation, or even longer than that. This is a ball club without a championship for 50 years, when the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, selected first by the Bucks in the 1969 draft, led the team to its only ever title in 1971.