Jrue Holiday: Being Traded to Boston, Guarding Giannis and Winning Gold in Tokyo

After being traded to the Boston Celtics the day before training camp, Jrue Holiday has taken on the challenge of moving to a new city and accepting a new role on a new team. He dives into his experience, how he’s embraced having the ball in his hands less and how it all comes down to one thing: winning.

 

Winning a championship alongside Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and the rest of the Celtics is his one and only goal on the NBA court, but as Holiday explains, his competitive nature doesn’t stay in the locker room. He says it follows him home, into a house that features one of the most competitive families in the country. Holiday and his wife, two-time soccer gold-medalist and former US Women’s National Team member Lauren Holiday, can’t be on opposing teams for anything for fear of an argument. And now, their extreme wills to win have passed on to their kids to create an interesting dynamic to say the least. Holiday often calls his daughter “JT,” and he tells a story about how his son thought Jayson Tatum’s sneakers were actually his sister’s.

 

The second half of the episode dives into Holiday playing against his former team, the Milwaukee Bucks, for the first time and drawing the assignment to guard all-world forward Giannis Antetokounmpo. Was that actually Holiday’s idea? Maybe, he says. Holiday has now played alongside Antetokounmpo, Tatum, Brown, Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and on a gold medal-winning USA Men’s Basketball Team, so Marc and Abby ask him about common threads among the best of the best. The group rounds out the conversation by diving into Holiday’s experience at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics – AKA the Covid Olympics – and how bizarre it was for him to see Team USA’s opponents act like fanboys around the likes of Tatum and Kevin Durant.

 

0:30 – Jrue on his love for food

 

2:30 – Adjusting to playing with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, and how they differ from other superstars he's played with

 

13:15 – Jrue on his competitive nature, and how that impacts his marriage to USWNT soccer great Lauren Holiday, who's also extremely competitive

 

22:10 – Flipping to the other side of the Celtics/Bucks rivalry, playing the Bucks for the first time, and defending Giannis

 

31:00 – Jrue’s experience at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

 

35:15 – How the bubble led to the launch of his family’s JLH Fund

 

WATCH on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikhUGyjZtxM

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