About 48 hours ago, right before Holiday dropped jaws with a career-high-tying 33 points and 14 assists (with just three turnovers) in an overtime win over Toronto, Holiday and Oklahoma City all-star Russell Westbrook were the only players in the league averaging at least 18 points and eight assists per game.
Today, however, Holiday is the only NBA player who averages at least 19 points and nine assists.
When Holiday missed four games in December, the Sixers were 0-4, losing those games by an average of 13 points and looking every bit the lottery team they would be without him. With Holiday, the Sixers are 17-19, just where you would expect them to be, a fringe team with a chance to make the playoffs as the eighth seed.
As his detractors reach for straws in constructing the laughably flimsy argument that Holiday really isn't a true point guard, they like to point out that his turnovers are up to 3.8, an obvious by-product of the significantly larger responsibilities Sixers coach Doug Collins has dumped into his lap this season.
What's more, that number is in retreat as well. Holiday's assists-to-turnover ratio has taken a precipitous drop lately, just 1.95 over the last 10 games. In the previous 17 games prior to that it was 3.21.
Holiday, 22, is already looking like a steal for the four-year, $41 million-plus deal he agreed to before the season. How much better would he look if, like Rondo, he had the benefit of throwing the ball to future Hall of Famers Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and, until this season, Ray Allen for his entire career?
Or suppose Holiday had a healthy Andrew Bynum to loft lobs to off pick-and-rolls? I don't think I'm going out on a limb suggesting that adding the most gifted offensive massive man (7-foot-1, 300 pounds is massive, not big) in the league would boost Holiday's assist numbers.
Royal Ivey, slowed by illness and injury at the start of the season, has yet to perform at the level that the Sixers hoped he would when they signed him over the summer. But suppose the Sixers had scored that strong, ready-to-run point guard they so wanted during the offseason?
They didn't, and now the coaching staff is asking Holiday to carry the heavy load of creating shots for his teammates. This extra exertion of energy is no doubt compromising his defense, which hasn't been as good as it has been in previous seasons.
To this point, the success or failure of the Sixers is on Holiday's back.
This isn't my opinion - its teammate Thad Young's.
"He's been carrying us," Young said. "We have to come up to help him out because the level that he's playing at is insane. You can't expect him to go out there and be able to stop guys and do the scoring and the distributing for us. We have to help him. If we don't help him we're not doing our job as teammates."
Holiday may not be selected by the coaches to the team. After all, there are other deserving guards in the East such as Cleveland's Kyrie Irving, Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis, and New Jersey's Deron Williams.
I've posed this question to Holiday a few times over the last month or so, dressing it up in different ways, poking and prodding to see if Holiday will give the typically hubris-heavy answer that might expose the me-first attitude so often expected from stars and emerging stars.
Holiday's answer has always been consistently vanilla and mature beyond his years, just as it was Friday after his latest stunning performance.
"Even though being an all-star would be awesome, it would feel weird to me being an all-star and just losing," Holiday said. "I think winning is way more important than all the accolades. Winning and being better as a team would be way better than individual accolades."
Contact John N. Mitchell at jmitchell@philly.com. Follow on Twitter @JmitchInquirer.
