Jrue Holiday Is An American Basketball Hero And Should Be Treated As Such

I'll get to Durant in a second, but I want to talk about Jrue Holiday real quick. Kevin Durant is the savior of Team USA basketball, but Jrue Holiday is an American basketball hero. He's been the 2nd best player on this team and it's not even close. To think he went from playing in the NBA Finals where he hounded and chased Chris Paul around to change that series, partying for a few days to celebrate the title and then fly to Tokyo. He then came in and tried to win the France game by himself. Pop then smartly moved him to the lead guard and starting lineup which has been massive because Dame Lillard has been BAD during these Olympics. I honestly forget about him in the 4th quarter because it's mostly just Holiday and Durant doing their thing while LaVine has been the 2nd best lead guard. 

Fast forward to tonight. Team USA stunk out loud the first 17 minutes or so of the game. We were down 15. FIFTEEN. We quite literally couldn't make a shot from three. Then Durant started to cook and the team really calmed their shit because of Holiday. He started taking people off the dribble. He made an extra pass to get people shots around the rim. It opened it all up which let the US cut the lead to 3 at half. Something we like to call a little ho-hum 47-14 run for Team USA from the end of the 2nd through the entire 3rd quarter. 

That was mostly thanks to Holiday. 

If it wasn't Holiday, it was Kevin Durant reminding the world he's fucking awesome. Hot take, I know. The guy is so damn good. The first half we basically went with 'please, save us Kevin' on offense. It's always insane to watch teams throw all these different looks at Durant and it just not matter. Best scorer in basketball that we've seen in our lifetime. He shouldn't be able to create that easy for himself. He shouldn't be that tall, that smooth and that consistent shooting the ball. 

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I'd like to thank Kevin's parents for having him be born in the USA. Very happy he plays for Team USA and wants to play for Team USA. Like I said, he's the savior of Team USA. He's the one that we can rely on. He's the star. He's the one that will keep making bigger names want to play for America. I enjoy beating the world's ass in basketball and would like that to continue. 

Shout out Booker too. This was the 2nd game in a row he really got hot in the 3rd quarter and helped blow the game open. Tonight though he was also awesome defensively on the ball. If he's shooting the ball well and making plays it just opens up even more for Holiday and Durant to attack. 20 points on 7-for-10 from the field? Yeah, that'll do it. 

So shout out Jrue. It would have been easy and honestly acceptable if he didn't want to fly from winning the NBA Finals to the Olympics, but he did and he's been our 2nd best and most important player. Without him, we'd be fucked. He's bailing us out for Dame not playing well. Without him it'd truly look like Durant vs the world when Team USA plays. You help America win a gold medal right after winning an NBA title for Milwaukee, you become an American basketball hero.