Reports Refute Claim Holiday is ‘Pissed’ About Trade to Trail Blazers

UPDATE (Wednesday, 12:30 a.m. PDT): Multiple reports have come out refuting the intel from the Heavy.com article stating that Jrue Holiday is “pissed” about his trade to the Portland Trail Blazers. Aaron Fentress of The Oregonian reported that two NBA sources informed him the report was untrue. Danny Marang of 1080TheFan also reported that someone with direct knowledge of the situation told him the report was inaccurate.

Jrue Holiday is “pissed” about his trade to the Portland Trail Blazers, according to a source of longtime Celtics reporter Steve Bulpett at Heavy.com:

Holiday was also expected to be a casualty of second apron concerns, so he had to know the possibility was very real that he’d be dealt away from Boston, a place he’d developed ties with both the team and the community.

According to one source close to the situation, Holiday is “pissed” he’s going to Portland.

“Now, if he winds up staying there, I’m sure he’ll be the professional he’s always been and make a positive contribution,” said the source. “But he’s not happy with this deal. I’ll be surprised if Portland doesn’t move him on if they can, because right now he does not want to go there.

There are a few things to unpack:

Is this report legit?

We know the NBA slop can be hot and heavy at certain times of the year, particularly around free agency and the draft. For every 100 posts by NBA Centel or some random Redditor, you should be prepared for 40, 70, or even all of them to be fabricated.

In this case, the report is coming from Bulpett, a reporter who worked for the Boston Globe for 35 years and is an active Vice President of the Professional Basketball Writers Association. You can feel comfortable that he’s not staking his professional reputation on someone else’s whim or making something up out of thin air for clicks.

Does this guarantee that Holiday feels a certain way about coming to Portland? No. OK, so then it means the source is lying? Not necessarily.

Remember the perils that befell Henry Abbott when he reported that Damian Lillard had asked out of Portland, only for Lillard to lambast him publicly and deny the report. Lillard stayed in Portland… for a few years. Then he asked out.

The point is that maybe in 2021 someone close to Dame told Abbott something, it was reported, and maybe that something was PRETTY close to what Dame thought, or maybe Dame’s thinking changed, or… who knows.

Same could be true here. Humans are weird. A narrative from a respected reporter quoting a good source does not a truth guarantee.

What if Holiday is “Pissed”?

I’m not sure it matters. As Bulpett’s source says themself, Holiday is a professional. He’s been one of the NBA’s most respectable, upstanding human beings for as long as he’s been in the league. If this report is true, he’s 100% allowed to feel however he wants to feel about it.

That won’t change the calculus either for him when the season starts, or for Blazers GM Joe Cronin today.

We’ve heard that multiple teams might be interested in Holiday’s services (specifically the Sacramento Kings and the Dallas Mavericks, according to Jake Fischer), and despite his contract you can squint and see his fit on a number of other teams. And the trade has yet to be finalized, making it possible to combine this move with others for accounting purposes, or to expand the trade… or to route Holiday somewhere else.

Cronin’s job requires him to perform due diligence on scoping Holiday’s market.

This would be true even if Jrue Holiday tweeted “YIPPEE!!! I can’t WAIT to Biketown my way to Blue Star and sink my chompers into a real Portland donut! Blazers, here I come!!”

And if he stays on the team, Holiday’s 30 minutes per game will fit neatly into the 32-minute-per-game hole left by Anfernee Simons, and he can be the tip of the defensive spear for a team that (kind of, sort of) found its identity (at times) last season in its defense. He can do that while mentoring a hungry young point guard in Scoot Henderson AND finding comradery with multiple players in Matisse Thybulle, Toumani Camara, and Donovan Clingan who take defense very seriously. It will be fine.

Final Verdict:

I think the report is accurate, and I don’t think it’s a big deal.

People are way too quick to forget that the NBA players are people. If someone told me, “yo Brandon, you’ve been traded from the City of New Haven to Austucket, Iowa” I’d be like “uhhhhhh… yikes. Austucket? Really? OK, I guess.”

It doesn’t mean I would hate Austucket. It doesn’t mean I would be weird about it when I got there. But it’s also extremely fair that I might have wanted to go to Seattle, or D.C., or Portland. And in the same way, Holiday is well within his right to feel however he wants to feel about being traded from Boston to Portland, and we should trust that he’ll be cool with whatever team he suits up for come October.