With a front row seat to another mistake, Jrue Holiday decided it was time to speak up. His voice rarely rises above the crowd during a game, but that exact moment was the reason the Boston Celtics traded him.

It was midway through the first quarter of Game 3 of the NBA Finals when Holiday began to experience déjà vu. Dallas Mavericks center Dereck Lively II shot over Celtics forward Xavier Tillman as Holiday witnessed a thunderous dunk and realized how listless his team looked.

As the Dallas crowd erupted, Holiday began clapping, grabbing his teammates and telling them to wake up.

“I don’t talk much. When I say something, I mean it,” Holiday recalled with a laugh. “You can hear the passion in my voice and see my face and how serious it is.”

At the time, Holiday was the only NBA champion on the Celtics’ roster. His teammates were often close, but there was always something in their way. Often it was themselves. His time in Milwaukee taught him that lulls often come during a playoff run, and if they drag on, they can derail the quest for a title.

“In the situations I’ve been in, I know you can’t have that because it can change a whole series,” he said. “I spoke my mind and my boys responded.”

Early in the second quarter, the Celtics regained the lead and were ultimately able to hold on to the win, turning what could have been a close series into an insurmountable 3-0 lead. Less than a week later, Holiday was no longer the only player on his team who could call himself a champion.

Holiday is one of the most distinctive players in the NBA. He can fill almost any role on both sides of the ball. But perhaps his most valuable attribute during Boston’s championship run was his fortitude in the most tense moments.

“Just be the calm in the storm,” Holiday said. “Know that not everything will go perfectly. But even though we are in these difficult times, we can always make it through. But we will do it together. So I just embrace these moments because they will come.”

Even before the Celtics counted on Holiday to lead, head coach Joe Mazzulla was listening. Two years earlier, Holiday — whose faith is a central part of his life — teamed up with Hallow, a prayer and meditation app, to read Bible passages to believers around the world.

When Mazzulla was Holiday’s coach for the 2023 All-Star Game, Mazzulla told him he listened to his prayers. He spoke of his plans to visit Israel and walk where Jesus walked.

“We talked about his journey,” Holiday said. “It helps a lot to be able to identify on a deeper level than just basketball. I think that’s why the chemistry in our team is so good.”

From the day Holiday arrived in Boston, Mazzulla was excited about his new guard’s championship experience. But at his new station everything would be different. With Milwaukee having Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez behind them, most of Holiday’s duties involved guarding the ball.

In Boston, Holiday would cover every position and move away from being on the ball at a new frequency. The coach gave his defensive ace not only freedom, but also unique authority to change the Celtics’ coverages. Holiday said it was the first time in his career that he was often the one orchestrating everything on the floor.

“I think (before) I was mostly on the ball and listening to other people. Here it forces me to talk more and be able to tell people what I see,” Holiday said. “If I change or stay in touch or whatever, it’s in the truest sense of the word have to communicate because I am the one who anchors it in the middle.”

But there was a defensive plan that was entirely Holiday’s domain. The Celtics developed a zone defense with Holiday under center, and it was his job to determine when the Celtics would break through.

When Holiday decided it was time to change the pace of the game, he would turn to his teammates and mutter “21 Savage.”

“I can’t remember if it was one of the guys’ favorite rappers, but I thought, ‘Let’s make up a name to make it fun,'” Mazzulla said. “Maybe it’s because Jrue is a wild man and is stuck in the middle?”

Activating 21 Savage was Holiday’s responsibility. Sometimes, during a timeout, Mazzulla would ask him if they should address it. Sometimes Holiday wouldn’t say a word, wait until the team was on the court and then shout it out loud.

It can last multiple possessions or just the first 14 seconds of the shot clock. The team simply followed Holiday’s lead as he monitored the state of affairs.

“To be honest, we don’t even know what we’re doing out there,” Celtics teammate Sam Hauser said. “It’s pretty random. We’ll just figure it out.”

The team trusted Holiday to control the emotional pulse of the game and trust that he could manipulate the opponent better than anyone else.

“It really got the offense going,” Holiday said. “Even when we’re running, they take a time out and try to adapt to what we’re doing. So we throw something else at them to mess them up too.”

According to teammate Al Horford, the 21 Savage zone works because Holiday is so effective at cleaning up his teammates’ mistakes.

“It’s communication and some instinct, to be honest,” Horford said. “If there is a glitch or an error, he covers it up and then we react to it and it happens completely automatically. We’ve done a good job of trusting each other and instincts just take over.”

If someone was out of position, Holiday would quickly jump in to cover them and then the rest of the defense would revolve around them. As offenses became more reactive, Holiday helped the Celtics defense do the same.

“I think it just sparked his creativity and his instincts to do things that he’s capable of doing as the game goes on,” Mazzulla said. “When Jrue is at his best, he doesn’t think. He just reacts instinctively and can change a defensive possession and change an entire game.”

“I don’t talk much. When I say something, I mean it,” Holiday said. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)

When Holiday isn’t orchestrating the defense, he’s not making much noise. He is not a speaker. He doesn’t talk much nonsense.

For someone who plays with so much ferocity, Holiday is surprisingly calm. Charles Lee, who coached him in Milwaukee and Boston before becoming head coach of the Charlotte Hornets this summer, calls this behavior Holiday’s “Cali Cool.”

“He has such a competitive edge but doesn’t let the emotions of the game get the best of him,” Lee said. “He’s able to embrace those emotions. He trusts his game. He is fearless. That’s why he’s easily able to make big plays in those moments. It doesn’t shrink at all.”

This was an innate quality of Holiday that his teammates saw when he came into the league as a teenager.

“I knew from day one that Jrue was going to be special because he was one of those guys that came in, he worked, but he also didn’t give anything–” Thad Young, Holiday’s Philadelphia 76ers teammate, said at the start their careers. “He had a calm demeanor, was never rushed and was never forced to get out of control.”

Most players need to regain their composure, but Holiday always had that Cali cool. Even in crucial playoff moments, teammates holding their breath during a break in play would often look over at him and see him blithely singing along to the arena music.

Friends would ask him if he ever felt tense in high-pressure situations. If it’s there, they don’t see it.

“You can feel the tension, but how do you not let the tension weaken you?” Holiday said. “How can you still go out and perform the way you want to? I feel like something like this clears my head and helps me relax. Then I can lock myself back in.”

Holiday found a kinship with Horford, the longtime veteran leader in Boston, who behaves similarly. Horford respected that Holiday didn’t tweet all the time, that he didn’t hold his championship credentials over the locker room to demand respect.

“We know. He knows it. There’s no need to talk about it,” Horford said. “It’s just there.”

Before Holiday arrived, many wondered how the Celtics would fill the void in shaping culture and defensive intensity following the departure of Marcus Smart. Franchise leadership insisted that Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum were ready to step up, which ultimately proved to be true. But the team needed an extra spark.

Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens carefully put together a list of balanced egos and knew he had the perfect final piece of the puzzle when Holiday went on the trading block. When the Celtics first signed, Stevens said Holiday was part of a short list of players around the league who were a perfect fit, but he never thought he would have a real chance. A player who could transform into whatever the team needed him to be – without resistance or expectations.

“I wanted to be positive. I don’t care about all the negative stuff,” Holiday said. “This is a journey and I want the journey to be as great as possible. I know there will be ups and downs and hard times, but I don’t have time to be a hater.”

Lee praised Holiday’s passive leadership as a recognition that you don’t always have to be the strongest voice in the room. Holiday waits for the moments when he feels his contribution will carry the most weight.

When Holiday gathered his team for that brief speech during the NBA Finals, there was no confusion about where his passion came from.

“I just said how I felt,” Holiday said. “With a team like this, they responded professionally, but you can tell people care. Sometimes when people don’t do that, you feel like you have something to say and have reservations about saying it. But honestly, this team was about winning and whatever it took to get there.

“I know that winning isn’t just about you.”

The way Holiday behaved hardly surprised Mazzulla. It was a bold move to hand the keys to the defense to a new player, despite his excellent reputation around the league. But after listening to Holiday’s prayers before they even met, Mazzulla had already heard everything he needed to give him that trust.

When Mazzulla met Holiday at the Paris Olympics this summer, it wasn’t just about remembering their shared success in winning the title. Mazzulla was happy to announce that they were now like-minded people on Hallow when the trainer was finally invited to record his prayers.

“It’s crazy that it’s part of our connection and he gets to be there too,” Holiday said. “Look at God, man.”

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Joshua Gateley, Francois Nel / Getty Images)