Jrue Holiday on being traded

Five minutes...

A couple years ago the Philadelphia 76ers looked like an up-and-coming team — Doug Collins had them playing good defense, they had Jrue Holiday and Evan Turner to go with Andre Iguodala. There was some reason for hope… then the gamble on Andrew Bynum went bad. Very bad.

Now the Sixers are rebuilding and Holiday was shipped out to New Orleans.

The first time a player is traded it’s kind of an emotional hit — you know the NBA is a business but then it really hits home.

Holiday told Sekou Smith of NBA.com’s Hangtime Blog that happened to him — but it took him all of five minutes to get over it.

“It was like five minutes, to be honest,” Holiday said. “After I got the call and they said I got traded, I immediately thought about [Sixers guard] Evan Turner. We’d been through everything together in Philly, really grown up together in the league in Philly along with Thad Young, Spencer Hawes and those guys, But then I thought about it and it was like, ‘oh snap, Eric Gordon‘s on your team. Anthony Davis is on your team. Ryan Anderson, Austin Rivers and at the time [Robin] Lopez. This could be crazy.’ They sent me to a good team. This could be a blessing in disguise.”

Lopez is gone and Tyreke Evans is in, but the idea remains the same — the Pelicans are now a team on the rise. New Orleans will be better than last season and they could be a playoff team if they come together. They have an All-Star point guard in Holiday and a guy who was one of the stars of the Team USA mini-camp in Anthony Davis (who is going to take a leap forward this season, and he was better than people realized last season).

This is a good landing spot. He could well be with another fast rising team, one that will be tested in a deep West, but Holiday is right this may well be a blessing. And in not much of a disguise.



Yeah Simmons... we defiantly made a mistake trading for this stud. Jennings was a beast at USA mini-camp.. Oh wait.