Uh yeah. Talk about ridiculous. From HoopsWorld (which also has a video "interview" with Jrue Holiday):
Top Point Guards: In case you missed it, the 2009 NBA Playoffs have been all about the point guard play. With the NBA Draft in just 55 days, HOOPSWORLD's Yannis Koutroupis took a look at this year's class of promising playmakers.
There is little doubt that Spanish sensation Ricky Rubio will lead the way, but the interesting dark horse in the top point guards might be UCLA's Jrue Holiday. HOOPSWORLD caught up with Jrue yesterday at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, where Jrue has been working out with NBA trainer David Thorpe and HOOPSWORLD's Mike Moreau. The comparison most are making of Jrue is that he is a Chris Paul type player, who is just 18-years-old and has nothing but upside to his game.
Chris Paul? LOL. I am assuming they are referencing the same Chris Paul who stayed in college for 2 years to hone his game. I am assuming they are referencing the same Chris Paul who never showed fear and hesitation when driving to the rack (without regularly missing layups).
The video "interview" in that link is even more surreal. In it Holiday basically takes an indirect shot against DC by saying how he held his own against "senior NBA guard" especially "in practices." What Holiday doesn't mention how during the entire season he basically had one good game against a player in the NBA draft (Derozan). Otherwise, he got lit up by Abrams, schooled by Harden (before Howland had to bring in ML for Ben Ball defense), and then destroyed by Nova guards.
BTW at least Ricky Rubio was able to hold his own in the world stage against NBA's best players the Olympic gold medal game. Jrue Holiday by comparison was embarrassed by Klay Thompson.
Look. I have no problem with this kid pursuing his NBA dream. What I think is not fair to UCLA and Coach Howland's basketball program is how this kid has been managed in the public eye since he held his press conference. He has been embarrassing himself through silly (and just plain wrong) comments and the people around him are making this whole sideshow look a little absurd. It is making him look dumb through these interviews with ridiculous, LOL funny hype. It is kind of sad to watch.
At this point, I don't want this kid back in our program. I guess the only exception here is if he suffers some kind of devastating injury ala Brandon Rush. I hope he stays healthy and goes on to get selected by the Celtics.
What I really want though is this charade of "testing waters" to be over soon so that he can hire his agent, make it official, and we can all be done with it and move on. That way we can just ignore this kind of nonsense in the press because it wouldn't have much to do with UCLA.
GO BRUINS.