Holiday, Team USA Men's Basketball to Begin on Saturday
July 25, 2024 | Men's Basketball, Olympics
Former UCLA standout guard Jrue Holiday will begin his second appearance with Team USA at the Olympics this weekend in France, as the USA Basketball Men's National Team opens against Serbia on Saturday, July 28.
Team USA's opening contest in the group phase (Group C) on Saturday will be televised live by NBC (also available through Peacock). Game time on NBC is scheduled for 8:15 a.m. (PT). All group phase contests at the 2024 Olympics will take place at Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Lille, France.
Joining Team USA in Group C includes Serbia, South Sudan and Puerto Rico. The top two teams from each of three groups, along with the two best third-placed teams will advance to the quarterfinal round (eight total teams). Team USA's additional group phase games are scheduled for Wednesday, July 31 (versus South Sudan) and Saturday, Aug. 3 (versus Puerto Rico).
Holiday helped guide the USA Basketball Men's National Team to the gold medal at the 2020 Olympics, which was played in the summer of 2021 (delayed by one year, due to COVID-19). Holiday averaged 11.8 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists in six games at the 2020 Olympics in Japan. He is one 49 former UCLA student-athletes (or coaches) headed to France for the upcoming Olympic Games (more details here).
A former standout at Campbell Hall High School, Holiday averaged 8.5 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game in 35 games (35 starts) as a freshman at UCLA in 2008-09.
Holiday will be competing at the Olympic Games for Team USA for the second time in three years. He has the opportunity to become the first former UCLA men's basketball player to have competed in two Olympic Games. More recently, Reggie Miller won a gold medal for Team USA in 1996 (Atlanta), before Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook helped the United States to a gold medal in 2012 (London). Holiday and Zach LaVine were part of the Team USA gold medal-winning squad at the 2020 Olympics (Japan).
In Team USA's gold medal-winning victory over France (87-82) on Aug. 6, 2021, Holiday finished with 11 points, five rebounds and a team-leading three steals.
Holiday was selected in the first round of the 2009 NBA Draft by the Philadelphia 76ers (No. 19 overall) after his freshman season at UCLA. Through 15 total NBA seasons, he has averaged 16.1 points, 4.2 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game in 975 career contests (894 starts).
In his first season with the Boston Celtics (2023-24), Holiday helped the organization win the 2024 NBA Finals. He averaged 12.5 points, 5.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game during the Celtics' regular season. Holiday was a central figure on the Celtics' roster, as the No. 1-seeded team in the Eastern Conference won the NBA Finals for the first time since 2008.