In the 1980s, five guards in a six-year span won Defensive Player of the Year, with Sidney Moncrief winning the award twice.
Since then, there has been just two winners total: Gary Payton in the 1995-96 season and Marcus Smart two seasons ago. This summer, the Celtics traded Marcus Smart to the Memphis Grizzlies in a three-team deal. It kicked off a flurry of moves that ultimately led to the Celtics landing Jrue Holiday.
While Smart was the Celtics' emotional leader for nearly a decade, Holiday is an upgrade as a two-way player. While Smart has already won the award, he may be joined by his replacement before long.
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Holiday has made an All-Defensive Team in five of the last six seasons, including three first team selections. I would argue that the 2018 NBA playoffs was when Holiday first began to receive national acclaim for his defense with how well he defended Damian Lillard. In the Pelicans' sweep of the Blazers, Lillard averaged 18.5 points, 4.8 assists, and four turnovers per game while shooting 35.2% from the field and posting a .415 eFG%.
As a prop bettor, when guards are set to draw Holiday as their defender, I typically look to their unders or will avoid them altogether. That was the case last Wednesday when Holiday took on his old team, the Milwaukee Bucks, for the first time. Motivated from the trade, I expected Holiday to come in determined to shut down Lillard. Instead, head coach Joe Mazzulla deployed Holiday on Giannis Antetokounmpo.
In hindsight, the move made perfect sense given that Holiday now knows Antetokounmpo as well as anyone having been his teammate for the last three years. Sure enough, Antetokounmpo scored 21 points and went 7-for-20 from the field with Holiday as his primary defender for much of the night. It was not the first time that Mazzulla used Holiday on one of the superstar big men in the East.
In two meetings against the Celtics this season, Joel Embiid is averaging 23.5 points per game, which is almost nine points below his season average. Embiid has shot 10 total free throw attempts against the Celtics this season, which is remarkable considering he has averaged more than 10 attempts per game in each of the past four seasons.
The Celtics play the Sixers again tonight, so Embiid will likely see more of Holiday. Three games will win not Holiday Defensive Player of the Year, however they do present his path to winning the award.
In recent years, the Defensive Player of the Year has typically gone to the league's leading shot blocker. Jaren Jackson Jr. and Rudy Gobert have won the award in four of the last six years while averaging at least 2.3 blocks per game in each of those seasons.
Since Payton last won the award in 1996, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutumbo, Ben Wallace, Marcus Camby and Dwight Howard have combined for 13 Defensive Player of the Year awards while averaging over two blocks per game each season. That brings us to 17 of the last 27 winners.
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If Holiday is going to break precedent, he will have to be unique. Limiting Antetokounmpo's and Embiid's impact despite standing just 6-foot-4 certainly qualifies because it shows that Holiday can defend all five positions. The Bucks and Sixers are among Boston's chief competitors to get back to claim the No. 1 seed in the regular season and get back to the NBA Finals. Boston is 2-1 against them thus far.
Holiday's ability to be used as a matchup weapon defensively improves Boston's entire defense. If a team has two top scoring guards, like Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell, Holiday can take one of them while Derrick White gets the other one.
Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum are both solid defenders themselves, but if the Celtics are playing an elite wing, Holiday can take the matchup and lighten their loads on both ends.
If Mazzula puts Holiday on another elite big like Antetokounmpo and Embiid, Kristaps Porzingis does not have to defend them all game and he can float as a weakside rim protector. He is averaging 1.7 blocks per game this season.
Holiday is averaging 0.9 blocks and 0.6 steals per game this season. To win Defensive Player of the Year, Holiday will likely need to average at least one per game in either category. He has averaged 1.5 steals per game for his career, so I would expect that to pick up at some point.
If he averages one block and steal per game, that would help his chances even more. He would join Wallace, Camby, Kevin Garnett, Kawhi Leonard, Marc Gasol, Joakim Noah and Antetokounmpo to win the award recently while averaging at one block and steal per game.
Boston is third in defensive rating this season, which would also help his cause if that maintains for the entire season.
At FanDuel, Holiday is currently tied for the eighth-best odds to win Defensive Player of the Year at +2100 with his former teammate, Antetokounmpo. He is as low as +1200 at BetMGM.
He also is the only guard that is currently in contention. Take the best odds at FanDuel, but I believe Holiday has value to win the award at +1500 or better.
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