The Faith of the NBA’s Jrue and Lauren Holiday

I’m a Christian, and I love basketball. And so, I love a good basketball story that involves good basketball players who are Christians.

In his tenth NBA season, Jrue Holiday has emerged as one of the NBA’s best all-around players. Already considered the best defensive point guard in the league, Holiday is increasingly sporting an offensive game to match.

What a difference two years can make. More to the point, what a difference faith can make.

In 2016, when Jrue and his wife, Lauren, were expecting their first child, doctors found a benign tumor on the right side of Lauren’s brain. Holiday, who after struggling with injuries was in the best basketball shape of his life, knew what he had to: He took an indefinite leave from his team, the New Orleans Pelicans, to care for his wife and soon-to-be-born daughter.

Though devastated about his wife’s condition, Holiday said that “there is nothing in life my wife can’t conquer with Jesus Christ in her corner.”

Both mother and daughter, thanks be to God, turned out fine. And Jrue was named the best defensive point guard in the league the following season. He doesn’t shy away from admitting how difficult Lauren’s health crisis had been, but he also told Sports Spectrum that the crisis brought him closer to God.

Now, if that was all there was to the story, Christian athlete who puts God and his family first and still excels, it would be worth telling. But there’s more.

You see, Jrue isn’t the only basketball player in his family. He’s not even the only Holiday currently in the NBA. This season, there are three Holiday brothers playing in the league.

Having two brothers play in the NBA isn’t all that unusual. For instance, there’s Stephen and Seth Curry and Marc and Pau Gasol.

But three? That’s unusual. Besides the Holiday brothers, the only other families to put three in the league are Jon, Brent, and Drew Barry, Marshall, Miles and Mason Plumlee, and the four Jones brothers: Caldwell, Charles, Major and Wil.

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SOURCE: Christian Post, John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera