Is Holiday 35 years old worth a first round?

Holiday's Celtic career may reach the end of the 2025 offseason.

After losing to the Knicks in the second round of the playoffs, there have been constant reports from outside that due to the serious luxury tax problem, the Celtics' core lineup is about to face disintegration this year. If the lineup remains unchanged, the Celtics will pay a record-breaking luxury tax of 280 million yuan, and the total amount of team payments is expected to exceed $500 million.

And Tatum is likely to be directly reimbursed next season due to a major Achilles tendon injury. Therefore, when the team temporarily loses competitiveness, how to reduce team spending has become the main goal of general manager Stevens during the offseason. Among them, Porzingis and Holiday are highly likely to be placed on the transaction shelves.

In the past few seasons, if the team wants to go far enough in the playoffs, they almost have a mobile and capable of protecting the frame. Porzingis's performance in the playoffs in the past two seasons is actually not too bad. In addition, his health in the past two years is not stable enough. Considering these, it is not easy for the Celtics to send him away successfully.

In this case, if the Celtics hope to save money and even obtain some positive assets through transactions, then the one who is really the most likely to be traded is Holiday.

Looking back at the selection of the most underrated players in previous years, Holiday has always been a low-key player on the list. He is indeed an excellent player. He not only has excellent professional qualities, but also has often underestimated personal skills. He has both offense and defense, and has sufficient playoff experience. He has brought championships to the Bucks and Celtics in the past two trades respectively.

If you only talk about the 2024 championship trophy, Holiday's performance is quite outstanding.

During the regular season of the 2023-24 season, Holiday played 69 games for the Celtics, averaging 12.5 points, 5.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game. His shooting percentages in the three events were 48%, 42.9%, and 83.3%, and his real shooting percentage was 59.7%.

In the playoffs stage, in the journey to win the 18th championship in the team history, Holiday played 19 games, averaging 13.2 points, 6.1 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game, with shooting percentages of 50.3%, 40.2%, and 95.5% respectively in the three games, and his real shooting percentage reached 61.7%.

Highlights are in the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals and the second game of the finals. Holiday gave 28 points, 7 rebounds, 8 assists, 3 steals, and 26 points, 11 rebounds and 3 assists. In both games, the Celtics won the victory, and Holiday was both the heroic players who grabbed the victory. In addition, there is the third game of the Eastern Conference Finals, where Holiday gave a key 2+1 and a winning steal at the last moment.

It is worth mentioning that because Holiday's performance in the regular season was quite impressive, before the start of the playoffs, the Celtics and Holiday reached a four-year, $134 million early contract renewal.

At that time, especially after winning the championship, the general view of this contract was: Although Holiday was a little older, his functionality and easy-to-get-friendly personality were a rare panacea player in the team and also brought a championship to the Celtics. From this perspective, this contract is definitely worth it.

However, just one year has passed, things seem to have changed.

was eliminated early in the second round of the playoffs in 2025. Looking back at the reasons for the Celtics' failure, there are many reasons behind it, and Holiday's decline is also one of them. He played 62 games in the regular season and his average data fell to 11.1 points, 4.3 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.1 steals. His scoring and assist data were the lowest since the rookie season, while his rebounding data was the lowest since 2017.

In terms of personal efficiency, Holiday in the 2024 season also had a mid-to-high shooting performance, but this season was slightly underperformed. His shooting percentage and three-point shooting percentage fell to 48% and 35.3% respectively, and his real shooting percentage was only 56.5%, the lowest level since 2021.

Originally, many fans thought that Holiday was just in the regular season and would stand up again in the playoffs, but when the playoffs really came, Holiday not only failed to stand up, but his performance was dived. In 11 games in the playoffs, Holiday played 8 of them, averaging only 9.3 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game. The shooting percentages of the three events were 48.9%, 31.6%, and 60%, respectively. Compared with the god-level data of 50%+40%+95% of the previous year, it is completely incomparable.

Of course, it is worthy of recognition that Holiday's performance on the defensive end is still stable, especially in the second round, his two main opponents were Brunson and Towns, who were defending the two in 123 rounds and 78 rounds respectively. The offensive performances of the opponents were 7-pointers for 25 points in 24 shots and 25 points in 10-pointers in 20 shots, respectively, which was quite good defensive performance.

This is also the most valuable part of Holiday at present. He can not only defend the back, but also switch to strikers and even players in the penalty area. He has the ability to switch defense that many championship teams value. In key playoff games, his defensive ability is still worthy of trust.

But his problem is also very obvious. Holiday has been very lost on the offensive end this season, and judging from his past performance, it seems that the 2023-24 season's accurate performance is more like an extraordinary performance. During the three seasons of playing for the Bucks, Holiday's three-point shooting percentage in the playoffs was only 30.3%, 31.6%, and 28.6%, respectively, while his real shooting percentage was 48.2%, 46.1%, and 49.1%.

Even in the year when he won the championship in 2021, Holiday's offensive performance did not reach the average level, and his overly outstanding defensive value concealed his offensive inefficiency; and in the first year of joining the Celtics, he relied on his offensive performance to win a big contract in the later stage of his career.. Currently, the big contract has three years left, with a total value of US$104 million. The most noteworthy point is that Holiday will soon be 35 years old. In other words, he will have to receive an annual salary of US$37.2 million at the age of 37.

Referring to previous trading rumors, the Celtics' trade asking price for Holiday is a first-round draft pick and an on-the-fight player with a contract smaller than Holiday. There are also many teams in the trading market who have expressed their interest in signings for Holiday.

From the perspective of trading next-generation players, no matter which team, using a first-round pick to exchange for a Holiday who is 35 years old and has three years left in the contract is definitely an extremely risky attempt. After all, no one can guarantee what level of Holiday's offensive performance will be next season, and it is impossible to even determine when his defensive foundation can be maintained.

If you perform well, maybe Holiday will be able to reproduce his surprise moments during the Bucks and Celtics; but if you perform poorly, you will not only lose a first round, but you will also have to swallow this premium contract.

Then the question arises: If the price is a first round, from the perspective of the fans, would you hope your home team will win Holiday?