Holiday’s return allows the Milwaukee Bucks to find their true selves

The Milwaukee Bucks have been a tricky team to peg nearly halfway through the abridged 2020-21 season.

They possess the league’s top offense but, after ranking No. 1 in the league last season, are barely clinging to a top-10 spot at the defensive end. A 20-13 record puts them just 1.5 games out from the top spot in the Eastern Conference, but whereas they’ve beaten sub.-500 teams to the tune of a 15-5 record, they’ve struggled against some of their better matchups with a 5-8 record against teams above .500.

In the month of February alone, they’ve won five straight games before quickly losing another five in a row, only to rebound with four consecutive victories heading into Sunday’s primetime matinee against the LA Clippers.

A significant reason behind the Bucks’ up-and-down performance? The absence of Jrue Holiday, who has missed Milwaukee’s last 10 games, having last played on Feb. 6.

We don’t know how good the Milwaukee Bucks truly are, but Jrue Holiday’s return affords them an honest shot to continue finding out.

Holiday’s scoring and assist numbers are down to 16.4 points and 5.4 assists per game, respectively, but he’s slid nicely into a tertiary role alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton while continuing to provide immense value at both ends.

Among Bucks players, only Donte DiVincenzo has a higher offensive rating than Holiday, who is posting a career-best true shooting percentage of 59.3. According to Cleaning The Glass, Milwaukee is surrendering 5.1 fewer points per 100 non-garbage time possessions with Holiday on the floor, a mark that puts the former two-time All-Defensive guard in the 81st percentile.

Even without Holiday, a team led by two All-Stars — not to mention the reigning two-time MVP and Defensive Player of the Year — should offer more stability than a 5-5 record. But his return, which reports indicate will come Sunday against the Clippers, isn’t about pumping more wins into Milwaukee’s regular-season total.

Following consecutive seasons with the league’s top record and no Finals appearances to show for it, the Bucks are no longer judged by their regular-season efforts no matter who’s in the lineup.

Those expectations factored heavily into the deal to acquire Holiday this past offseason, which not only cost a hoard of draft picks but also forced the front office to part with several key rotation pieces like George Hill, Robin Lopez and Wesley Matthews.

Despite the obvious trade-offs, the blockbuster deal was a calculated decision. In a postseason series where the influence of the second unit is minimized, swapping Eric Bledsoe for Holiday was a no-brainer move. While maintaining Milwaukee’s stifling defense, Holiday offered more reliable 3-point shooting and superiority at creating shots off the bounce from every spot on the court.

But like any notable offseason addition, integrating a piece as significant as Holiday would be easier said than done. Building that synergy would take time, and it would have to come while the Bucks also tried to tweak their strategy at both ends to better serve their championship odds.

Only, since Holiday was sidelined due to the league’s health and safety protocols before a game against the Nuggets, Mike Budenholzer hasn’t been allowed to do so.

It’s hard to get the ball truly rolling when one of your key guys isn’t around to pull his share of the weight. How is Milwaukee to discover the type of ceiling it has without the availability of those who contribute to the honest assessment?

Though the wins Holiday’s absence might’ve cost more recently are noticeable, they’re nowhere near as important as the ones that could wind up slipping through their fingers in the crucial summer months.

Even with Holiday back in the lineup, the Bucks are not a perfect team. Bench play matters less in the playoffs but it still carries weight. Bobby Portis, Bryn Forbes and D.J. Augustin, the only players the front office could afford after adding Holiday’s $26.1 million salary to its books, are a large reason Milwaukee’s defense has taken a step back.

Though pacing the rest of the league, the offense is still missing the multi-faceted components that can translate to postseason success.

Holiday most likely won’t fix every single one of those issues. We might eventually find out that that which is keeping Milwaukee from championship glory runs deeper than the players on the roster.

Whatever the answers that lie ahead, the Bucks are just happy to have the piece back in place that allows them to properly build towards finding out.