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“I have a lot of respect for Joel,” Horford said. “I’ve always been a big fan of his game, and just how he is. He’s a guy that you want to see play, and I feel like you want him around you, right?”
And therein lies a little glimpse into what makes Al Horford such a good defender: He’s a student of the game, or more particularly, a student of his opponents’ games.
Al does not trash talk. He is the very opposite of the flashy, attention-getting/attention-seeking sort of player that’s usually pulling down max money in the NBA.
Think about a guy like Paul George. Or Jimmy Butler.
Now think about the accomplishments of the teams those guys played for. The Pacers did a lot of damage in the playoffs back in 2013 and 2014, and Paul George was an important part of those teams, but since then he’s been little more than a regular season stat chaser. And Jimmy Butler? Well, all you have to do is look at the tantrum he threw in order to get traded out of Minnesota.
There were times over the past few years, where certain Celtics fans longed for the presence of one or both of those guys on the team. And if you draw a Venn diagram of the Celtics fans who were proposing the most outlandish trades for Paul George and Butler, and those who have repeatedly expressed their scorn for “Average Al”, you’d have quite a bit of overlap.
Al Horford makes the Boston Celtics better, period.
And most of the stuff he does won’t show up on a stat sheet because they don’t have stats for “In the right place at the right time”, “correctly anticipated player’s next move”, etc.
Take a good hard look at “Average Al”: He’s not overly tall, especially when he’s playing center. He’s not particularly fast, nor does he have a “thick, jacked frame.”
You look at Horford and, at first glance, you see a guy whose sole qualification for the position he plays is his height.
Yet, here you have a guy who routinely shuts down hyped players like Joel Embiid.
Embiid has a few inches and several years on Horford. If you put the two of them in a gym, Embiid’s almost certainly stronger and faster than “Average Al.”
But–and this is something that doesn’t get enough attention–you put Al and Embiid in a film session, and that’s where you’ll see the advantages “Average Al” brings to the game.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Al Horford knows some of Embiid’s tendencies better than Embiid himself. In a game that, to the casual fan, appears to be played strictly, or primarily, by instinct, it takes a bit of effort to recognize a player who is smarter than his opponent.
The Celtics have had guys who terrorized the other team on defense–Bill Russell is the classic example of a guy who intimidated everyone on the other team, in one way or another, but they’ve also had guys like DJ and Satch Sanders who calmly and quietly made their opponent’s life absolutely miserable. Al is in the latter mold, and now that he’s back, the Celtics should keep on winning.
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