told DJ Siddiqi of RG.org<\/a>. “I’ve been blessed enough to play for this long, and I’ve never taken that for granted. I know this is a dream come true for most young kids, but I know 17 years is a dream come true for any 35-year-old who gets a chance to stay as healthy as possible and to play the game that they love. I’ll just continue playing until I can’t anymore.”<\/p>\nAt 35 years old, there\u2019s no telling how many NBA years Holiday has left.<\/p>\n
What can Jrue Holiday do for Blazers?<\/p>\n
Boston traded Holiday to the Blazers in exchange for Anfernee Simons. The deal originally included two second-round picks heading to the Celtics as well, but after Holiday\u2019s physical came through, they were removed.<\/p>\n
For the past two seasons, including a championship run in 2024, Holiday was an essential part of the puzzle in Boston. His offensive connectedness and defensive leadership were exactly what the Celtics needed.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the Celtics\u2019 objective this summer wasn\u2019t the same as in past offseasons. Rather than spending and pushing the team forward, Boston\u2019s primary goal was to duck the second apron.<\/p>\n
With Jayson Tatum slated to miss all (or at least most) of next season, the Celtics\u2019 chances in the East are likely the worst they\u2019ve been in nearly a decade. Combine that with their place as a second-apron team for the last two years, and cutting salary was always going to be a priority.<\/p>\n
Holiday\u2019s massive contract made it easy to ship him out. He\u2019s going to make $32.4 million this year, $34.8 million in 2026-27, and has a player option for $37.2 million in 2027-28.<\/p>\n
But for Portland, Holiday\u2019s veteran leadership is evidently what they\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n
A late-season surge inched the close to the Play-In Tournament last season, though they ultimately came up short. But with a solid young core in place, Holiday\u2019s assistance could help push them up the standings in a stacked Western Conference.<\/p>\n
His guidance could help guys like Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe take another leap, which would be perfect for the Blazers\u2019 development as a team.<\/p>\n
Holiday still has three years left on his contract, too, and based on what he told Siddiqi, he doesn\u2019t plan on hanging up his sneakers anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jrue Holiday, who the Boston Celtics traded to the Portland Trail Blazers this summer, recently spoke about how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-161411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}