Lauren and Jrue Holiday are what many would call a power couple.
Lauren won two Olympic gold medals and a World Cup trophy as a former star midfielder with the United States women’s national team. Jrue is an NBA champion, having won the 2021 title with the Milwaukee Bucks, and an Olympic gold medalist after his run with Team USA in Tokyo.
With two of the best in their respective sports living under one roof, sometimes things get competitive.
Jrue and Lauren Holiday stopped by the latest episode of the Tea with A & Phee podcast to talk about what it’s like to be in a relationship with another professional athlete.
“I’m, like, the most competitive person ever,” Lauren says.
Jrue and Lauren recall a game of “Family Feud” that got particularly competitive. “I guess I did name-call,” Lauren says, with Jrue adding: “We’ve had to be on the same team, and on ‘Family Feud’ we weren’t on the same team.”
The two have also been known to give each other feedback after getting off the court or the field.
“It always something,” Jrue says of Lauren’s input after his basketball games. “You’re a winner, I understand.”
“She is encouraging,” he eventually concedes. “It’s not like she is just talking trash all the time.”
While Lauren is more blunt in her assessment of Jrue’s game, the NBA star approaches Lauren’s career a bit differently. “She’s brutally honest and I just use different words,” he says.
What it might come down to, Jrue says, is that women leave it all out on the field.
“Females play … I just feel like they play the game better, like they play it harder all the time,” he says. “The way that you all play, the way that you all train its always, like, 100 percent all the time. And I would say for men, it’s not always like that. So going to watch her play or even watching y’all play, it’s fun to watch because I feel like that’s the way the game should be played.”
Jrue admits there were times he told Lauren she wasn’t playing like herself, but that only occurred “twice out of ten years of playing,” he says.
Something the Holidays have agreed upon is their commitment to doing good. The couple joined forces in 2020 to start the JLH Social Impact Fund, helping those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and racial and social injustices.
“How it started was before the bubble. I didn’t really want to go back to the bubble, and it wasn’t because of basketball or anything — it was just I felt like there were things in life that were more important than basketball,” Jrue says. “People were fighting for their lives, their jobs, their families.”
The idea to pledge the remaining $5 million of Jrue’s 2020 salary first came from Lauren.
“People are incredible, and if we give them a chance and you invest in people, the things they can do is just mind-blowing,” she says.
Listen to the full conversation with Lauren and Jrue Holiday here.
