I wonder if his shoulder injury (dislocated??) near the end of the regular season is still bothering him a little.
I suspect that this is at least a contributing factor. Funny how much parallel Holiday’s season has to Brogdon’s season last season. Both were great all year, and then declined suddenly in the playoffs. Jrue may still turn it around. He could have a string of games like White had. It would not surprise me.
I'm sure it has something to do with it.
I'll also say that after tonight, I wonder if he's trying to finesse it too much inside. He was much more forceful tonight at the basket, even pushing Mobley around, and he was a much better percentage, too.
People overreact based on a couple of games. White had a few good games (and they were really good games), and suddenly he is going to be in the running for a max contract when he is a FA. Of course he is trending back towards his norm. Holiday now has a good game in game 3 (18 pts, 3-4 from 3), White has a normal'ish for him game (12 pts, 3-8 from 3) and everyone is excited about Jrue again.
I don't expect any 38 point games from Holiday like White had. Maybe a 20-25 point game, which would still make us really hard to beat. Even 15-20 points (assuming efficient shooting) is great. White averaged about 15 pts in the regular season, Holiday 12.5 pts. White is up to about 20 in the post season, Holiday down to about 10. Neither is likely to last. Both will trend towards their norms, which is fine.
I think Holiday could score between 15-20 every game if he wanted to, if the team needed him to. Same with White. This was a great game for Holiday. As others have said, he was clearly more focused on scoring, being more aggressive. I think he has been kind of trying all season to calibrate how aggressive he should be on this team. I think Game 3 vs. CLE was pretty much perfect. I predict a sting of good solid games for Holiday.
