The Jrue Holiday Project

Why the 76ers' top draft pick can and will pay dividends.

by E. James Beale

First the Sixers' brass drafted Jrue Holiday, an athletic if statistically unproductive point guard from UCLA, when Ty Lawson, Jeff Teague and Eric Maynor, three older and more polished point guards, were on the board. Those guards, the fans say, are NBA-ready, while Holiday is not. "I would feel a lot better had the Sixers drafted Lawson," Jonathan Tannenwald of philly.com wrote flatly.

Then, the argument goes, the team doubled down on its mistake by not aggressively pursuing any assets in free agency — assets like incumbent Andre Miller, Orlando backup big man Marcin Gortat or journeyman point guard Mike Bibby.

The Sixers don't appear to be taking this criticism to heart. After happily picking Holiday, the team announced that it didn't expect him to produce immediately. It hasn't been active in free agency and isn't moving quickly on re-signing Miller. In fact, thus far, all the rumors involving the 76ers seem to have the team unloading talent in exchange for fiscal flexibility (for what it's worth, these rumors have been pretty universally denied). The usually excessively fan-friendly 76ers seem to be spitting in the face of their most vocal fans.

Good.

It would be a sad day if the organization caved to fans' wishes. Sad not on principle, but because in this case the conventional wisdom — that the 76ers need to improve immediately — is wrong. In fact, it's exactly wrong. Holiday wasn't an excellent pick despite being a few years away. He was an excellent pick because of it.

Holiday, like most of the 76ers' young core, has a chance to be legit. It's easy to dismiss the phrase "Gatorade High School Player of the Year" — it was just high school — but in basketball (unlike in football) the award means something. The list of recent winners reads like a who's-who of All-Star talents. Here's the complete rundown of winners since 2001: LeBron, LeBron, Dwight, Oden, Oden, Kevin Love, Jrue Holiday. This isn't B.J. Mullens the 76ers just drafted.

Further, far too much is being made of Holiday's UCLA statistics. Critics are pointing to his 8.5, 4 and 4, and saying he can't transition to the NBA. That's crazy. Holiday was playing major minutes, out of position, for a high-major, defense-oriented team. For a freshman point guard, those numbers aren't even bad. They compare favorably to the freshman production of NBA mainstays Deron Williams and Brandon Roy. Of the three point guards fans were clamoring for the Sixers to take, only Lawson's freshman-year stats compare to Holiday's.

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As for free agency, even if the 76ers had the money to add a big name piece this offseason, none of the available players would have turned the Home Team into title contenders. Ben Gordon would have provided much-needed outside shooting and little else. Hedo Turkoglu would have been redundant on a team that already employs two starting small forwards. And that's the best of the bunch. Throwing assets like a player like Marcin Gortat, who has hit a total of three shots outside the key over the course of his two-year NBA career, would mean aiming for the fourth seed in the East. That isn't a goal worth pursuing.

Look, Holiday may well be less ready to contribute to the NBA in 2010 than some other rookies. And if the 76ers were a quick point guard away from championship level this year, maybe picking him would have been a fuck-up. But they're not. They're not close to contending. Let's say the difference between Holiday and Lawson is five wins. Five wins is a huge number for any rookie PG — according to win scores, one of the new all-inclusive NBA stats, five wins was the approximate difference between Derrick Rose and George Hill last year — but, for the 76ers, it would also only be the difference between the sixth seed in the playoffs and the fifth seed. Want to know how many fifth or sixth seeds have won an NBA title? None. Ever. There isn't a point guard outside of Chris Paul who could single-handedly make these 76ers title contenders. No one is accusing Ty Lawson of being Chris Paul.

The 76ers, like Jrue Holiday, Andre Iguodala's prime, Thad Young's potential stardom, the expiration of Samuel Dalembert's hilarious contract and Jim McIlvaine Marcin Gortat's inevitable return to Poland, are a couple of years away. That's not a knock. A core of Iguodala, Young, Marreese Speights, Lou Williams and Holiday is one unnamed superstar away from title contention in 2012, which is more than most teams can say. But this team isn't built to win now and in the future; it's built to win in the future. Those five wins might just matter in a few years.