Like Jrue Holiday, Bro

In the movie "Hustle," when the Sixers are trying to teach a newly drafted player how to play defense, assistant coach Adam Sandler and Co. encourage him to keep his arm in the defender's back, and push the player with the ball where the defender wants him to go. Tyrese Maxey sums up the strategy with four words: "Like Jrue Holiday, bro." Because that's all you need to say. If you want to play great defense, great basketball period, you just watch Jrue Holiday (great movie, by the way. The Sixers are the same sad sack franchise with poor leadership we know them to be, and in the end, the main character ends up on the Celtics after the Sixers are too stupid to sign him. And Anthony Edwards is even better in this movie than Ray Allen was in "He Got Game." Plus Adam Sandler. Highly recommend. Anyway.). In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals versus the Pacers, Holiday gave us a living, breathing document of Correct Basketball.

We can start with the big things:

• 28 points, his season high, and the fourth-highest total of his 81-game playoff career, and second on the team to Jayson Tatum's 36
• Eight assists, second on the team to Derrick White's nine
• Seven rebounds, tied for second on the team to Tatum's 12
• Three steals, tied for most on the team
• Shot 62.5% from the floor, which led Celtics starters
• Shot 50% from three, which led Celtics starters
• Turned off Tyrese Haliburton's water in the fourth quarter and OT

From a big-picture perspective, this is the precise output for which Holiday was brought to Boston. The C's don't need him to be the best, but they need him to fill in and do whatever is needed on that night. You step back, and see that he had the second-highest or highest totals/best percentages, and it's a thing of beauty. Not only is he able to fill gaps, he's able to fill all the gaps. There really could not have been a more perfect acquisition. Brad Stevens won Executive of the Year for a reason.

The one that was really great is the one I least expected. Haliburton really burned Holiday earlier this season, and I was legit worried when Jrue first started picking up Haliburton in the fourth quarter. But after pouring in 19 points in the first three quarters, Haliburton scored precisely zero points in the fourth. Haliburton and Myles Turner shot 15-for-25 in the first three quarters, but Holiday and Jayson Tatum turned off their water, respectively, in the fourth.

Indiana adjusted, and started attacking Al Horford, and that strategy worked pretty well, but when Indiana drew up their game plan, "Haliburton zero points on 0-for-2 shooting in the fourth quarter" is not how they drew it up. Jrue forced them to play a different way, and in overtime Andrew Nembhard (reeling at that point after he committed one of the worst turnovers in NBA history to end regulation) finally showed the flaw in that strategy, when he lost his footing in the lane, and got his shot sent back by Al Horford. Tatum got a fast break opportunity by outracing everyone down the floor that only became free throws because Aaron Nesmith made a characteristically wild Aaron Nesmith foul – his sixth and final foul. It was a bad decision, compounding Nembhard's bad decisions to 1) try and drive past Horford, and 2) shoot when he failed to do so.

We can talk about the little things:

• Being in the right place every time. To wit:
  • Tatum knocks the ball out of Nesmith's hands with 3:09 left in OT after an offensive rebound, and the ball bounces right to Holiday, because he had been actively tracking the rebound, and was ready for a loose ball. He then picked up Nesmith's fifth foul. Holiday is not credited with anything in the box score for this play.
  • In the final minute of OT, Holiday was got open for two critical inbounds passes.
    • The first, he deftly tossed a difficult and dangerous pass to White, who turned it into an uncontested layup.
    • On the next possession, he recognized that the three people closest to the ball were all covered, and came sprinting back onto the screen to give White a person to inbound to. And then he drained both of his free throws.
• Holiday's defense was so excellent that as overtime ticked down to one minute left, Holiday Iceman'd Halburton so badly that Haliburton literally just fell out of bounds. When announcers talk about things that don't show up in the box score for a particular player, this is what they mean. Jrue is not credited with a steal here. He just played stout, solid defense, and gave Haliburton such little room that the out of bounds line became a literal tightrope that he fell off of. I have seen it happen before, but never with the stakes so high. Nineteen seconds later, Tatum finally drilled the three we were waiting all night for him to hit, and the game became academic.

The chief little thing Holiday did though was the inbounds pass at the end of regulation. Usually, White or Tatum trigger the out of bounds plays. I honestly can't remember any important inbounds plays this season that Holiday triggered. Yet, there he was, on the final play of the game, ready and waiting for his time. Here's how it looked when he threw the pass:

The only reason this wasn't a more difficult pass is because Haliburton just doesn't have the court sense to know where to be standing. Haliburton honestly isn't cutting down the angle on any potential pass. Maybe if Tatum curls around that pick from Horford, Haliburton would have been a deterrent, but Holiday wisely realized he didn't have time for that. And a two pointer doesn't help there, anyway. Poor Haliburton wasn't even waving his hands trying to create chaos, he just stood there. This matchup, honestly, might have been part of why Holiday triggered the pass to begin with.

Jaylen Brown obviously has to get most of the glory for hitting the shot. It is instantly one of the greatest shots in Celtics history, and he had no business hitting it (White gets some credit for springing him with the screen). But Holiday gets him the ball in the perfect position, right at his waist, where only he could catch the pass, so Jaylen didn't have to waste any energy getting into his shot.

You watch enough basketball, and you know how rare it is for everything to line up like that. I mean, this game was over. Even after the miracle turnover (speaking of little things, amazing effort by JB on that play to force it – he deserved to take the last shot after that hustle), the C's needed a second miracle just to tie it, and then a third miracle to keep Haliburton from hitting a third consecutive end-of-quarter three pointer (speaking of little things, great defense by White and Tatum on that final play to force a bad shot).

There are obviously lots of things the C's can improve upon and/or fix in Game 2, but the hope is that Game 1 gave them the scare they usually need in each playoff series without the accompanying loss. And it was a team effort. Tatum put in 36-12-4 with three steals, Horford had three blocks, D White had nine assists, and JB had 26-7-5 with three steals and a block, and the amazing game-tying shot. Underpinning it all though, was Jrue Holiday. Jaylen gave him the ultimate compliment, telling the media, "[Jrue's] the reason why we won this game." I couldn't agree more. When you want to know the right way to play, just play like Jrue Holiday, bro.