New Orleans Pelicans: Let’s not get too hyped over Jrue Holiday

Jrue Holiday is one of many exciting players on the New Orleans Pelicans but he is catching a little too much steam heading into the 2019 season.

With a slew of young stars and some savvy veterans to balance out the roster, the New Orleans Pelicans will be one of the most compelling teams to watch in 2019.

Led by sensational rookie Zion Williamson, the Pelicans have the potential to vastly exceed expectations and make it all the way to the NBA Playoffs. However, they also have the potential to allow their inexperience to catch up to them and lead to them underperforming.

The end goal is not how the team performs this year but it will be a nice litmus test on where the team stands. Because at the end of the day, this team is massively inexperienced, aside from a few key veterans that will balance out the roster nicely.

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One of those experienced veterans in Jrue Holiday, who is receiving a ton of buzz prior to the season.

Holiday is not experienced when it comes to contending for championships but he has playoff experience and has the NBA experience to be a helping hand to the young guys. J.J. Redick will embody the role of the veteran, but Holiday will be extremely useful in that regard as well.

Holiday has been receiving a lot of buzz recently, which has been generated by the lack of buzz early on. Seeing that not that many people were talking about him, a lot of sportswriters have hopped on the Holiday bandwagon, telling their readers to watch out for 2019.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that and don’t get me wrong, Holiday is actually a viable candidate to make the NBA All-Star Team as a reserve. Potential doesn’t guarantee anything, though, and there are reasons to believe that Holiday may not take this massive leap after all.

First of all, there are other scorers on the team that is going to be taking the ball out of his hand. Zion is the main priority, Brandon Ingram is ready to progress into 20 points per night guy and Derrick Favors is the master of the pick and roll and will score a dozen points per game doing so.

Holiday recorded over 20 points per game last season because of Anthony Davis‘ limited role. He can very easily dip back down with this many scorers.

His scoring may end up being helped by Lonzo Ball, who was acquired in the Davis deal and is a natural point guard by every sense of the word. He is a great facilitator, excellent rebounder for his position and has potentially elite defense that is still growing.

That all sounds lovely and a Ball-Holiday backcourt is a dream scenario. But because of his distribution ability, Ball is going to be the one taking the ball up the court, which is only going to hurt Holiday’s assists numbers (and inevitably) his rebounding numbers as well.

And with two other great guards in Redick and Josh Hart that need playing time, Holiday might see his minutes dip back down around the 32 mark.

This is not to say that Holiday will be bad as he absolutely will still have a big impact on the New Orleans Pelicans.

This is to say that we should all calm down just a tad on the Jrue Holiday buzz. He is a great player and we all know that. Just because others are sleeping on his does not mean we should overvalue him.