In a Portland Trail Blazers season full of mysterious lingering injuries, Jrue Holiday's situation unfortunately takes the cake. Portland's veteran guard has been sidelined since suffering a right calf strain on Nov. 14. Last week, Portland finally announced that Holiday has been cleared to return to on-court basketball activities. However, he still remains without a timeline for his return.
The silver lining is that the Blazers have done relatively well in his absence, hovering around .500. Deni Avdija has been stepping up, taking over the playmaking duties in an expanded point-forward role. Still, if the Blazers want to end a four-year playoff drought, they'll need Holiday back in the equation.
Holiday was proving to be an upgrade over Anfernee Simons prior to his injury, providing Portland with more of a two-way impact and a calming veteran presence. But Portland still doesn't know to what extent they can truly rely on him.
Jrue Holiday's age, contract, and injury raise doubts about Blazers' investment
He's nearing the end of his career at age 35. He's also only exceeded 65 games played in three of his last six seasons. Holiday's numbers with the Boston Celtics declined in part due to injuries, averaging just 11.1 points and 3.9 assists last season.
In terms of both production and availability, how often are we truly going to see the version of Holiday that the Blazers had for those 12 short games?
That's an impossible question to answer right now, but it's ultimately going to determine whether Portland was right to make this Simons-Holiday swap. It's clear who is more impactful on winning, even at this stage in their respective careers. But at least with Simons, Portland had financial flexibility with his contract set to expire after the season. Now, with Holiday, the Blazers are committed to three expensive years, capped by a $37.2 million player option in 2027-28, when he'll be close to retirement at age 37.
That's the painful reality of the situation. In a vacuum, the trade makes sense. Portland's building blocks are too established to tank, so they are taking their rebuild in the other direction by making a win-now move. In theory, Holiday was also supposed to boost their young core with his unselfish play, championship resume, and veteran experience. The trade was working perfectly as intended for those 12 games. But that may have been the peak of Holiday's time in Portland.
He's only going to get older and more expensive, making it even more difficult to align his closing window with the Blazers rebuilding timeline. Add injury concerns on top of that, and this suddenly looks like a lot of risk for Portland to be taking on.
The Blazers didn't pay for Holiday in the form of sending major assets to Boston; they paid for it by taking on that massive contract. And with every game he misses, that investment becomes dangerously closer to not being worth it.