{"id":695781,"date":"2026-04-03T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/695781\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:24:07","slug":"blazers-just-entered-uncharted-territory-thanks-to-another-jrue-holiday-plot-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/695781\/","title":{"rendered":"Blazers just entered uncharted territory thanks to another Jrue Holiday plot twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a (perhaps too exciting) win against the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday, the Portland Trail Blazers are suddenly within shouting distance of the No. 7 spot in the Western Conference. Tiago Splitter’s team is now 8-2 in its past 10 games and it might be peaking at just the right time.<\/p>\n

The past two games, specifically, have been won on the back of Jrue Holiday<\/a>, who has been good all season, but appears to be finishing the year how he started it: by playing great basketball. Holiday has taken over 20 shots in each of those games, the first time as a Blazer he’s done that. He’s gone 20-43 from the field, scoring 57 points in those two games, with three total free throw attempts. <\/p>\n

I don’t buy in to the idea of “ethical basketball,” but I will admit that it’s more aesthetically pleasing to watch a player operate with the clear intention of getting a bucket. That’s what we’re seeing from the highly aggressive Holiday \u2014 he’s attacking whoever has the displeasure of standing in his way.<\/p>\n

In nine of the 11 games before Tuesday’s win against the Clippers, Holiday had scored 15 points or fewer. He wasn’t bad in those games, but was playing a little more passively, really trying to embody the team-first point guard role. But in two consecutive huge games, Jrue said team be damned, I’m getting mine… And he got his. <\/p>\n

He didn’t actually say that, for the record. So please don’t quote him on that. But he said it in spirit, and score-first Jrue remains a blast to watch.<\/p>\n

Uncle Jrue Holiday has been stellar in two huge Blazers wins<\/p>\n

Trading for Jrue Holiday proved to be a brilliant move by Joe Cronin and the rest of the front office pretty much immediately. He was attacking consistently, facilitating for others, and bringing a type of point guard the Blazers haven’t employed in many years. Even when he went a little quiet for stretches this year, he was seldom a negative for the team, and now he’s fully rounding back into the form he began the year with. <\/p>\n

It hasn’t been a good two-game stretch for the 35 year-old point guard, it’s been a nearly unprecedented<\/a> one, as Jrue has joined Steph Curry, LeBron James, James Harden, and Kevin Durant as the only 35 year-old or older players to post the stat lines he posted this week. <\/p>\n

I keep saying out loud, “The Blazers are going to have a winning record,” to see if it feels any less crazy. It doesn’t. I still can’t quite believe how impressively this roster has rebounded from any strife, and Jrue Holiday’s role in that cannot be overstated. He’s a winner, and the Blazers have won their two most important games of the year (until the next one, as it goes) because of him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a (perhaps too exciting) win against the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday, the Portland Trail Blazers are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,6,687,471,3967,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-695781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-portland-trail-blazers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-portland","12":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","13":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","14":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116340761140724187","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}