It’s 4:45 p.m. Tip off is still 75 minutes away, and Al Horford is talking to his old teammate Kyle Korver, who is now Atlanta’s Assistant General Manager. Suddenly a voice can be heard from the stands.
“Al! Read my sign please!”
Players hear their names called every time they hit the floor. It happens so often that guys have developed the ability to tune it out. They simply can’t acknowledge every person who screams at them.
But Horford did, in fact, read this fan’s sign, which read “Sorry MJ Horford is my GOAT.” When the fan asked for his jersey to be signed, Horford went out of his way to make it happen.
Turns out, Horford going above and beyond would be a theme on Sunday night.
In a game where the Celtics missed 34 3-pointers, Horford led the hustle charge to get to loose balls and offensive rebounds to keep possessions alive and give Boston the extra chances they needed to beat a feisty Hawks team. In a season where Joe Mazzulla has openly stated they need to be better at finding ways to win when they don't hit their 3-pointers, Horford was in the middle of every play they needed to still put up 113 points.
“Al had a rebound at the end of the game that was like 103-94 that was tremendous,” Joe Mazzula said. “It was funny, me and Jaylen (Brown) were standing at the scorer's table when he went and got that and we both just looked at each other, and it was like, ‘How lucky we are to have this guy?’”
It’s hard to say new things about Horford because so much of it has been said already. He’s 37, which is an age I’d love to get back to, but also an age where NBA productivity is rare. Yet, he’s still making these kinds of plays on a regular basis. This is standard operating procedure for him.
“Al just adds to winning,” Brown said. “That play is just a small example of what Al brings to our team. That was a corner crash, ball bounced on the other side of the floor, Al goes up through three guys. It was a huge effort play, and those are the type of plays you need to win games like this.”
How does a guy score six points and end up a +17 in a game? The 15 rebounds he grabbed helped. Twelve of those were defensive rebounds, which is critical in winning possessions. Limiting the Hawks to one shot while keeping possessions alive on the other end is the biggest reason why the Celtics were able to win. Atlanta scored 18 more points than Boston from the 3-point line, but Boston made 12 more 2-pointers, which is a 24-point advantage. That six-point difference alone wins the game. The four-point difference at the line made it a nice double-digit win.
It's hard to make the kinds of plays the Celtics made to gain that kind of advantage.
“He sets the example every day,” Mazzulla said. “Sometimes guys like him can go under-appreciated, but we have to be able to show the way that guy wants to win.”
He definitely wants that. A ring is the one thing missing from his resume, and this is his best chance at it. It’s why he took the step back that he did to move to the bench. It’s why he’s on the floor when he needs to get a loose ball, or flying through the air to get to a rebound that, at that point in the game, probably could have been sacrificed in the name of self-preservation.
But that's not who Horford is. And if there's one thing he’s not, at least in the locker room, is under-appreciated.
“It just gives us so much energy. We get so excited when he does those things,” Tatum said. “He ran from the opposite corner over three guys and got the opposite rebound and gave us another opportunity to score. You know, that's contagious, the crowd feeds off of that, we feed off of that and, you know, he's, he's the guy on our team. Everybody loves him and respects him. Night in and night out, he does things like that, that, you know, we can't say thank you enough for.”
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