"I'm going to have to change my player rankings on my favorite player again," Barkley said. "Joakim Noah, he is [still my favorite], but my second-favorite player is Jrue Holiday."
After that, Holiday's phone, much like the player himself during these playoffs, blew up.
This is what Doug Collins wanted so badly to happen this season. He wanted his Sixers team to get into the playoffs so that the young players - such as Holiday, Evan Turner, Jodie Meeks, and Spencer Hawes - could experience the postseason for the first time. As Collins said before the seventh-seeded Sixers' series with second-seeded Miami began, it is impossible to know just how a player will respond to the pressure of a seven-game playoff series until he actually experiences it.
Will the player elevate his game, bringing it on par with the moment? Or will he panic or - worse - disappear altogether? Some players are made to perform in the playoffs, and some simply are not.
Collins was not concerned about Holiday, but he did not know for sure, either.
He knows now.
In four playoff games, Holiday has averaged a team-high 15.3 points per game, up from his regular-season average of 14.0. His assists are down, from 6.5 per game during the regular season to 5.0 in the playoffs, but so, too, are his turnovers, from 2.7 per game to 2.0.
In Game 1, Holiday scored 19 points, in Game 3 he scored 20. He has not disappeared. Far from it.
Although he missed seven of his first 10 shots against the Heat on Sunday, Holiday had no problem burying a three-pointer with 46.9 seconds remaining in Game 4 to help the Sixers finish the game on a 10-0 run and force a Game 5 in Miami on Wednesday. It was huge, cutting the Heat lead to just one point, 82-81.
"I don't know how many guys would've taken that shot the other day - 20 years old, first playoffs," Collins said.
