The Milwaukee Bucks acquired guard Jrue Holiday in a trade from the New Orleans Pelicans on Nov. 24, 2020, in a move co-owner Wes Edens said, “was the basketball equivalent of pushing all the chips in the middle of the table when you look at what we gave up to facilitate that trade.”
It was a fitting deal, as it was 50 years after the Bucks acquired point guard Oscar Robertson to pair with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to win the organization’s first NBA championship.
And Holiday would indeed help deliver the next championship in Milwaukee with a sequence late in Game 5 in Phoenix on July 17, 2021, narrated by ESPN play-by-play voice Mike Breen that changed the course of Bucks history. And, in many ways, the steal he came up with in the final 20 seconds with the Bucks up 120-119 that led to an alley-oop to Giannis Antetokounmpo perfectly characterized the on-court impact Holiday had on the team.
Here is an oral history of the steal and lob that has since been dubbed the “Valley Oop”:
Phoenix guard Devin Booker tried to use his off arm to get space on P.J. Tucker and potentially give his team the lead, but the Bucks forward didn’t budge. As Antetokounmpo stalked Booker from the restricted area, Holiday started to sneak in from the opposite side by sagging off Chris Paul.
Thanasis Antetokounmpo: “I’m like, ‘Get him, Jrue!’ because this is what we’re practicing. Jrue blitzed him and the first thing I’m, oh don’t foul!”
Khris Middleton: “Just make a read. That’s what Jrue does. He’s on the ball-help side. Great hands. Great instincts.”
Booker attempted one pump fake but couldn’t get Antetokounmpo into the air, and when the Suns’ guard turned to find an outlet, Holiday ripped the ball away.
“Booker the drive gets inside, leans in, knocked away and stolen by Holiday! …”
Coach Mike Budenholzer: “I just love his competitiveness. We preach and talk so much about competing. I’m not even saying what [Holiday] did was like textbook or, you know, exactly what we plan and script and everything, but that’s competing. He saw a chance, he saw an opportunity to compete and he did it. And you know he just went and took the ball. Like, just literally, I’m gonna take this, I’m going to take this championship. This is ours.”
The ball popped free with 18.2 seconds left and Holiday began to angle the ball up the court toward the Bucks bench less than a second later.
Middleton: “He rips the ball and my heart drops like, ‘Oh my God! We got the stop we needed.”
Holiday: “In the moment, I was like man, I’m going to run the clock out.”
But Antetokounmpo was in a dead sprint up the middle of the floor at that point.
Giannis Antetokounmpo: “I know time and score, but I know that I’m the best transition player to ever play this game.”
Assistant coach Josh Oppenheimer: “I don’t think anybody was watching Giannis. I think everybody’s watching Jrue dribble the ball and run for his life.”
Thanasis Antetokounmpo: “I see Giannis take off like a, like an Olympic sprinter and you see the arms and he’s running he’s running.”
The ‘Valley Oop’ to Giannis Antetokounmpo
“Phoenix has to foul and …”
With 15.2 seconds left, Antetokounmpo and Holiday were also in each other’s heads. As Antetokounmpo motioned to throw the ball up, Holiday had already picked up his dribble to do just that.
Holiday: “You just seen Giannis take off like a freight train and he’s pointing up. Like, what am I supposed to do? [laughs]”
Middleton: “At the end of the day, we throw high to Giannis [laughs]. Of course he made the right play.”
Thanasis Antetokounmpo: “I said to myself like, throw it, Jrue, throw it!”
Giannis Antetokounmpo: “We have done it so many times and he trusted me and he knew that I’m going to get it. I don’t think there was any doubt in this matter. Even when he threw it, he looked and [shouted in celebration].”
Holiday: “Luckily I just placed it at the right place at the right time. Obviously he did the bulk of the work because he had to jump and go get it. I think I took a calculated risk and thank God it ended up working out.”
Holiday’s decision to throw the lob played out directly in front of the Bucks bench, and it was an all-time “No! Yes!” moment for some of the coaches and players watching it unfold.
Budenholzer: “He’s dribbling down the court and Giannis is running and I have no doubt. We, from the day I got the job and until that [point], it’s like ‘run, play fast, play aggressive.’ It was definitely that’s just who we are. In some ways I’ve said, I think you do it for 48 minutes. With a lead, I’m not a guy that really believes in slowing it down and milking the clock. I’m not saying that’s right, but certainly there’s a belief that you run and you play fast for 48 minutes and Jrue certainly decided [laughs] that we were going to do it for all 48, including that possession.”
Pat Connaughton: “I think Jrue saw Chris Paul, and Jrue saw Giannis and thought as I long I don’t throw this thing 16 feet in the air and it’s closer to 10, 12 feet, there’s only one guy getting it. He’s gonna get that ball. I think it was instinctual based off a read that he made. I was on the court in the corner. I had the best view of anybody in the house.”
Bobby Portis Jr.: “I didn’t think that he was going to throw the lob for real, you feel me? Especially with it being like 15, 16, whatever, as much seconds it was on the clock. That was great through.”
Sam Merrill: “I vaguely remember kind of seeing Giannis running but being like, there’s no way Jrue’s going to throw this. Then also knowing Jrue … he’s in a good way kind of a basketball airhead. He just plays. It was a perfect pass.”
Assistant coach Darvin Ham: “Fearlessness, man. He’ll try some [expletive]. In some weird moments. His IQ is off the charts, but he has some brain farts every now and again [laughs]. I love him. He’s one of the best players I’ve ever coached, played with, hands down. One of the best point guards I’ve ever been around. Especially defensively, probably the best. Certain plays, man, it’s just there and he’ll make ‘em sometimes and it didn’t work out. But in that particular moment that one worked out.”
Assistant coach Chad Forcier: “Jrue’s steal and alley-oop were frightening and exhilarating.”
Jordan Nwora: “It was crazy. Obviously Jrue is one of the best two-way players. Throwing it up to Giannis? Especially in that moment, when I know Giannis is hurting a little bit? It’s crazy for Giannis to go get it. I think half our team ran over to Giannis on the baseline when that happened. It was definitely the highlight of the finals. It was crazy.”
Oppenheimer: “Obviously we didn’t need the basket, we just had to run out the clock and they were going to foul Jrue. How much does Jrue have to trust Giannis to throw that thing? And Jrue’s the only player in the world who would’ve thrown it. That’s the greatness of Jrue. Jrue is as California cool as there is. Jrue is like, ‘dude, I threw it, I knew he’d go get it.’”
Despite being pushed by Paul, Antetokounmpo finished the dunk and gave the Bucks a 122-119 lead with 13.5 seconds left.
“Antetokounmpo throws it down!”
Holiday: “What made it crazier was Giannis completely destroyed that lob. Like, when he dunked that ball and got fouled … yeah. You could only hear the Milwaukee Bucks fans in that arena going crazy. I think Phoenix was so quiet and shocked that that moment had happened. It’s a moment that I’ll never forget.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo: “He pushed me. Physically. That’s a flagrant foul. You can’t push somebody. You can’t push somebody in the air. When somebody takes a leap, you should be in the NBA, rule book, two hands in the back, should be a Flagrant 2, not even one, out of there. Because you can fall down, fall down on your knees. The thing that saved me was I grabbed the rim. So when I dunked it, I grabbed the rim so his force did not send me off in the stands. I was able to grab the rim and fall on my two feet, on balance. So that kind of saved me. But if it was anything else I would’ve been in the stands. Thank God I grabbed that rim. It’s OK. Who cares now? I care, people care. It’s history.”
Connaughton: “That was a flagrant foul. But in that moment, nobody thinking about that. They’re thinking about the foul and the great play. I don’t even the think the refs were thinking about it.”
Holiday bellowed “and one!” and Antetokounmpo’s defiant, closed-fist mean mug to the baseline camera spoke a thousand words to the tens of thousands of Bucks fans cheering outside Fiserv Forum in the Deer District.
Giannis Antetokounmpo: “It wasn’t even a celebration, I just came down, and I was like [mean mugs]. You see it in my eyes: Ruthless. I love those moments. That’s one of my favorite moments in basketball. And there’s nothing to celebrate. It’s over. Take your stuff and go home. I have a lot of love for you guys here in Phoenix. Let’s just take your stuff and go home.”
Portis: “You look at the video, we all still have masks on and everything on the sideline, too, that’s what’s crazy. But yeah, that was a great play.”
Assistant coach Mike Dunlap: “It’s one of those one-of-one [plays]. It’s Kirk Gibson pointing the fence kind of and he comes up all banged up and all of a sudden he goes yard. It was a secular moment in time that will transfer 50 years from now.”
Budenholzer: “The pass to be right on the money, and Giannis to go get it and just that connection between those two guys, the skill and the talent and the athleticism. You can just see the ball in the air and Giannis going up and getting it and it’s just like, yeah, that’s what he does and that’s what we do. Jrue taking it from somebody on defense is what he does and what we do. So yeah, I mean pretty defining moment, no doubt.”
Holiday trade ‘set the table’ for Bucks’ title
Even though no member of the Bucks title team remains on the roster five years later, the organization still is paying off the Holiday trade. The final chip will be cashed at the 2027 NBA Draft.
Edens: “It looks like a great debt [laughs]. We hadn’t won a championship in 50 years and it obviously it all worked out. That was the big decision and I think, obviously in hindsight, it was a great one.”
Budenholzer: “That trade, bringing him in, set the table and really put us in a position to accomplish what we did. His addition, you cannot overstate how important Jrue was to us and what he meant to us in so many different ways.”
Forcier: “I don’t think people that outside of a team dynamic really can recognize or truly appreciate what it means to have a connector on your team. Fans can personalize what a connector is if you put it into your own work life. You either work with somebody or have worked with somebody that’s a real connector. Not every team has one of those. But when you have someone like that, it makes a profound difference on how your team is. One of the things with Jrue is he was, he is an unbelievable connector of people. He bridges people together. He has a way of having people be able to talk to each other or engage with each other.”
Middleton: “Jrue and Brook [Lopez] were the forgotten heroes of our team. What Jrue did that whole series; I respect Jrue a lot because he took a lot off my plate. He knows this all the time, I’m not the best defender. I used to have to guard the best wing and they used to give me hell. Having him give those other guys hell was great.”
Dunlap: “His humility, and how he was built to let the stars shine, but he was an understated star himself because everybody knew he was a top-five defensive player in the league. But he never really got that acclaim.”
As for Breen’s call itself, Holiday said he had not actively sought out to watch or hear the call himself.
Holiday: “I have enough people in my life in basketball, people who text it or show it or people who will randomly come up to me and say that, ‘Knocked away and stolen by Holiday!’ I don’t think that I maybe realized, especially in that moment or even close after because so much was going on, we ended up going to the Olympics and then the [next] season started right after that, it took me awhile to realize, wow, that was actually kind of a cool play.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Oral history of Jrue Holiday’s NBA Finals steal, Bucks’ ‘Valley Oop’ | Exclusive
Reporting by Jim Owczarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jim Owczarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
