00:00Drew Holliday will always be known
00:03as an NBA championship X-factor.
00:06Holliday wasn't the central superstar
00:08of the 2021 champion Milwaukee Bucks,
00:11but Giannis Anacompo didn't get a ring
00:13until he had Drew by his side.
00:16Same goes for Jason Tatum and the Boston Celtics.
00:19They flirted with glory for years until, boom,
00:22Drew arrived and pushed them over the edge.
00:25It's not hard to figure out why Holliday
00:27was a repeat missing ingredient.
00:29Over a decade plus in the NBA,
00:32he earned a reputation
00:33as your favorite player's favorite player.
00:36A boundlessly versatile defender,
00:37like truly a master of the defensive arts.
00:41Erudite and rugged enough to stop anyone.
00:44A well-rounded but never domineering offensive talent.
00:47A rock solid teammate
00:49and a likable community-oriented human being.
00:53A baller, a winner, a class act,
00:55and sure enough, as soon as he had a real opportunity,
00:59a champion in multiple cities.
01:01To understand the Drew we now know,
01:04it helps to understand the Drews we saw before
01:07and the Drews who could have been.
01:10Let's meet these versions of Drew Holliday in the prism.
01:23Drew Holliday's talent is unique
01:25and his resume is excellent,
01:27but no one would mistake him for a superstar.
01:30That word just doesn't describe the way he plays
01:33nor the type of attention he receives for his NBA career.
01:36High school Drew was different.
01:38Drew grew up in Los Angeles, California,
01:41and he grew up in basketball.
01:43Every single member of his family played D1 ball,
01:47both parents and all three of his siblings.
01:50Two of those siblings joined him in the NBA.
01:53Drew though was the star,
01:55not just of the Holliday clan,
01:57but of the entire state.
01:58As a high school senior,
02:00Drew piloted Campbell Hall School
02:01to its third title in four years
02:04by filling up the entire stat sheet,
02:06earning state Mr. Basketball honors.
02:09And this isn't a California senior class
02:11packed with future NBA stars.
02:14The names DeMar DeRozan, Klay Thompson, Paul George,
02:18all pop off the list in hindsight.
02:20Even in that company, Drew was the guy.
02:24He won National Player of the Year in 08,
02:26starred in the All-American game,
02:28and ranked at or near the top of every prospect list.
02:33If Holliday had graduated just a couple years prior,
02:36he probably would have jumped straight to the NBA
02:39and become one of the top draft picks.
02:42But since he arrived after the league
02:44instituted its age limit,
02:46Holliday attended college.
02:47And here we reach a fascinating fork in the road.
02:51Every basketball school in the country wanted Drew,
02:54obviously.
02:55But Drew passed on those offers
02:57and the chance to play with his brother Justin
02:59at Washington.
03:00He wanted to stay home and attend UCLA.
03:03Now, it would be wrong to call this choice a mistake
03:07given what we know now.
03:08Holliday became an excellent and accomplished
03:11and very wealthy NBA player,
03:13and I will add, he met his wife
03:15during his one year in college.
03:17But actually, the way Drew met his wife
03:20tells us something about why UCLA
03:23wasn't necessarily the right fit.
03:25Before she was Lauren Holliday,
03:27professional and international soccer player,
03:30she was Lauren Chaney, UCLA soccer player.
03:34And the story goes that Lauren Chaney
03:36met her future husband because she observed a child
03:39trying to get the autograph of Bruins star Darren Collison,
03:42only to discover with disappointment
03:44that she was actually talking to Drew.
03:47Lauren chimed in, and the rest is history.
03:51But let's talk about Darren Collison.
03:54In 2005, Collison was UCLA's key backcourt recruit.
03:59Collison played behind star point guard Jordan Farmar
04:02for a season, then Farmar left for the NBA
04:05and Collison ascended.
04:06In 2006, Russell Westbrook was UCLA's key backcourt recruit.
04:12Westbrook played behind star point guard Darren Collison
04:14for a season, then Collison stayed for his junior year.
04:19Yeah.
04:21When Drew Holliday committed to UCLA in 2007,
04:24the Bruins were stacked at his position.
04:26Westbrook was starting beside the elder Collison.
04:30But after the Bruins made yet another Final Four in 2008,
04:34everyone expected the live jam to clear.
04:37Collison would join star forward Kevin Love
04:39in entering the NBA draft.
04:41Westbrook would become UCLA's starting point guard
04:44no matter what, with Holliday as his freshman apprentice.
04:47The cycle would continue.
04:49But it didn't work like that.
04:50Even without a huge role, the sophomore Westbrook
04:53rocketed up draft boards enough that he decided
04:56to bolt early for the NBA.
04:58Collison, meanwhile, decided to return again
05:02to play his senior college season.
05:04So this was not the situation Drew Holliday expected
05:07when he got to campus.
05:09Holliday profiled as a natural point guard,
05:11perhaps even more so than Westbrook.
05:14But just like Russ, he had to play off ball a lot
05:17while Collison held down his one spot.
05:19Playing out of position beside a star point guard
05:22in coach Ben Howland's slow down system,
05:25Holliday's freshman numbers didn't look so hot,
05:28especially compared to his ridiculous high school stats.
05:31But instead of waiting out Collison's graduation
05:34and proving himself as a sophomore,
05:36Holliday opted to take a gamble
05:38and enter the 2009 NBA draft.
05:4109 was a point guard draft.
05:43And while I can't say it for sure,
05:45I strongly suspect a Drew Holliday
05:47who had played somewhere other than UCLA
05:50would have been right up there
05:51with these guys atop draft boards.
05:54Instead, he was disadvantaged
05:56not only by sharing the spotlight with Collison,
05:58but by being compared to Westbrook.
06:01In the 08 draft, Russ had the obvious raw athleticism
06:05to win over NBA teams
06:06despite his overshadowed college career.
06:09Holliday's potential was subtler
06:11and he just didn't have quite the same juice at draft time.
06:15Thus, Holliday slipped all the way out of the lottery
06:18to the Philadelphia 76ers at 17.
06:21He might've gone even lower
06:23if he weren't so impressive in his workouts.
06:25Nobody anticipated this NBA pipeline
06:28for the Drew Holliday they saw in high school.
06:30But there he was in 2009
06:33and here he was a decade and a half later.
06:36All's well that ends well.
06:37But what happened in between?
06:41Well, the 76ers hit on their draft pick.
06:43Holliday proved he could defend NBA players
06:46even as a teenager.
06:47He ran the offense plenty and looked good doing it.
06:51Drew shot well from downtown,
06:52wiping away the primary red flag on his college resume.
06:56And Holliday only improved on that solid rookie season.
06:59And the Sixers improved with him.
07:01They made it back to the playoffs in 2011,
07:03then made it into the second round in 2012.
07:06You might remember that conference semifinal battle
07:08with the Celtics from the documentary film, Uncut Gems.
07:12Anyway, 2012 is when Drew and the Sixers began to diverge.
07:17In the 12-13 season,
07:18Holliday fully broke out as an all-star,
07:21scoring and creating more than ever before
07:24with the same great work on defense.
07:27In that same 12-13 season,
07:29the Sixers walked headfirst into franchise-altering disaster.
07:34This right here is one of the largest
07:36and in retrospect, grimmest trades in NBA history.
07:41For our purposes, the Sixers gave up multiple good players
07:45in exchange for a package centered around Andrew Bynum,
07:48a very good player and hypothetical co-star
07:51whose bizarre injury saga prevented him
07:54from playing a single game in Philadelphia.
07:57The Sixers went from decent to mediocre in an instant.
08:01They fired their general manager
08:03and replaced him with a fella called Sam Henke,
08:05who quickly determined that the best way to recover
08:08from the post-trade mediocrity was to steer into the skid.
08:11He would empty out the roster,
08:13tank for high draft picks, and rebuild from scratch.
08:17This brazen tank job and its partial but undeniable payoff
08:21would come to be called The Process.
08:24And the first victim of The Process was Drew Holliday.
08:28What do you do with a 23-year-old point guard
08:30who just led your team in scoring and assists?
08:33You turn him into draft capital, baby.
08:35For his All-Star ascent, Drew was rewarded
08:38with a sudden draft night trade to the freshly renamed
08:42and actively terrible New Orleans Pelicans.
08:45On paper, this stretch looks like a deep valley
08:49spanning the prime of Holliday's career.
08:51Drew's Pelicans had a losing record during his tenure.
08:54They won just a single playoff series in seven years.
08:58Holliday's numbers dipped,
08:59and he didn't make another All-Star team
09:01the whole time he was in New Orleans.
09:03In fact, the gap between Holliday's 2013 All-Star selection
09:08and his selection in 2023 as a Milwaukee Buck
09:11represents the longest such gap in history up to that point.
09:15Some of that, of course, was environment.
09:18Holliday played alongside a young,
09:20budding superstar, Anthony Davis,
09:21for most of that New Orleans stint,
09:23and thus reverted to his second fiddle role.
09:26But injury played a part, too.
09:28Holliday missed huge chunks of his New Orleans tenure
09:31because of leg surgery, then eye socket surgery,
09:34then abdominal surgery.
09:36And this was also a trying time for non-basketball reasons.
09:40In 2016, while pregnant, Lauren Holliday was diagnosed
09:44with a benign brain tumor.
09:46Drew took a leave of absence to be home with his wife,
09:49who thankfully gave birth to a healthy daughter,
09:52then had the tumor successfully removed.
09:55It wasn't until around year five in New Orleans
09:57that Holliday found full health and availability
10:01and started to help lead the Pelicans toward success.
10:04And then Davis bailed, and the Pelicans decided
10:06to rebuild around Zion Williamson.
10:09The point is, this was not how Drew or anyone else
10:12hoped his seven years in New Orleans might go.
10:15This was well below the trajectory
10:17established in Philadelphia.
10:19And yet, perhaps more so than any other oft-injured player
10:24for an oft-losing team, Holliday will never have
10:27to buy a drink in New Orleans.
10:29He's cool with Pelicans fans for life.
10:32Why?
10:33Well, because he persisted through the tough stuff
10:36and made the most of his role.
10:38By the end of that Pelicans tenure,
10:40premier opponents were starting to call Drew
10:43the best defender in the NBA,
10:45even though he had never won that award.
10:47It's also because Holliday was a world-renowned sweetie
10:51who endeared himself not just to coworkers,
10:54but to the whole community,
10:55with which he developed a real connection.
10:57And because even in the post-Davis rebuild,
11:00Holliday insisted he was ready to commit to the Pelicans.
11:04Who knows if Drew actually would have stayed
11:06if he hit free agency as a Pelican,
11:08but suffice to say, he did not force his way out.
11:12If things went better with Davis,
11:13or even if the aftermath of his departure
11:16shook out differently, the Pelicans may have gone all out
11:19to keep Drew.
11:20If Drew didn't work toward
11:21that elite defensive reputation in New Orleans,
11:24contending teams wouldn't have bid for his services.
11:28He may not have had this late career run of excellence,
11:31but that is Drew Holliday's story.
11:33Each step of the way,
11:35the outcome wasn't exactly what people expected,
11:37and perhaps not what Holliday himself would have chosen.
11:41And yet, thanks to the kind of player Holliday is
11:44and person he seems to be,
11:46all those unexpected turns led him here,
11:49to the kind of impact and career legacy
11:51any athlete would love to have.
11:54The missing piece, the most underrated,
11:58your favorite player's favorite player,
11:59the X-factor on teams
12:01that couldn't have won it all without him.
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