Jrue Holiday Hopes to Retire with Bucks: 'I Don't Want to Play for Any Other Team'

Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday wants to finish his NBA career with the organization, though he's not looking to retire in the near future.

Speaking to Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Holiday said he wants to finish his career in Milwaukee.

"Would love to," he said. "Before I even won here I think I said I'm a Buck for life and I mean that like deep in my heart. I don't want to play for any other team. I think we have a chance to continue to do great things as the Bucks team and organization so I want to be in Milwaukee."

Holiday also clarified previous comments he made about potentially retiring when his current deal ends after the 2024-25 season.

The 33-year-old originally talked about his retirement plans during an appearance on the Point Forward Podcast with Andre Iguodala and Evan Turner in May 2022. It didn't gain traction until after the Bucks were eliminated from the playoffs by the Miami Heat in April 2023.

"Just them being my friends and we've talked about stages in basketball and sometimes you go through modes or hard spots where like, even with my family, maybe the best thing to do is retire or even just being tired and being exhausted, playing a lot of basketball. But no," Holiday told Owczarski. "My answer is no, I'm not retiring."

Holiday has one more season on his deal with a $37.4 million player option for 2024-25. Everything about the Bucks' future is uncertain at this point until there's some clarity on what Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to do.

Antetokounmpo will play this season in Milwaukee, but he told Tania Ganguli of the New York Times that he's not sure about signing an extension with the team:

"The real question's not going to be this year—numbers-wise it doesn't make sense. But next year, next summer it would make more sense for both parties. Even then, I don't know. would not be the best version of myself if I don't know that everybody's on the same page, everybody's going for a championship, everybody's going to sacrifice time away from their family like I do. And if I don't feel that, I'm not signing."

If things don't go the way Antetokounmpo wants, it's not implausible to think this will be his final season with the Bucks. They don't have to trade him if he doesn't sign an extension, but taking the risk of him playing out the final guaranteed year of his contract in 2024-25 and him leaving for nothing would be more devastating for the franchise than getting nothing back in a potential trade that they can use to accelerate a rebuild.

As long as Antetokounmpo is with the Bucks, players like Holiday, Brook Lopez and Khris Middleton are going to be valuable because that's a proven championship core. They led the franchise to an NBA title during the 2020-21 season.

Holiday was named to the All-Star team last season for the second time in his career. He averaged 19.3 points, 7.4 assists and 5.0 rebounds per game in 67 appearances.