Money effort by Horford
Lives up to contract billing in pivotal win
Here’s something about which all sports fans can agree: You can’t put a grade on an athlete’s contract until it runs out.
As a fer-instance, it was probably unfair, and certainly premature, to be squawking all season about the fouryear, $113 million contract Celtics president Danny Ainge handed to Al Horford. And it’s probably just as unfair, and certainly premature, to view Horford’s stellar postseason performances this spring as proof that Al’s worth the dough.
So we’ll wait for the four years to run out.
But while we wait, would it be OK to throw some love Al’s way by pointing out that he was absolutely, positively in a class by himself in the Celtics’ 123-101 Game 5 dismantling of the Washington Wizards last night at the Garden? We could just put it up there in big, bold letters that Horford played like the best passing big man in the NBA, except he didn’t play like a big last night. That business of his being listed as “C” in Boston’s starting lineup? That was just for bookkeeping, nothing more.
“Al has been one of our primary playmakers all year,” said Celtics coach Brad Stevens — emphasis on the word “playmakers.”
“There were times in the Chicago series, especially, where he brought the ball down the floor for us,” he said. “Today he was usually the second guy to touch it and was able to read whatever was the right next play. When we went on a run at the end of the third, he was passing out of the post. His ability to make people around him better has been very helpful to our team, obviously.”
The numbers are as follows: Al Horford scored 19 points on 8-for-9 shooting, and he had six rebounds, three blocks and seven assists. He connected on 3-of-4 3-point attempts. He did all this in 28 minutes of work.
As for where he did that work . . .
“He was everywhere,” said Marcus Smart. “That’s what Al does. That’s what we expect from Al.”
What we don’t expect from Al is to be talkin’ crazy, which some said he was doing after the Celtics went belly up in Game 4 at the Verizon Center, losing 121-102. Most folks believe the Celtics were awful that night, the problem here being that most folks don’t include Horford.
He actually thought the C’s played rather well in Game 4 — at least for a half. The other half? Not so much. But Horford liked what he saw, and said so . . . with great fervor.
“Crazy, right?” Horford said after last night’s game, and let’s pause here to point out that Crazy Al Horford would be a really, really cool nickname except that, alas, he’s not crazy. He’s just really, really upbeat about a Celtics team that can be really, really good but also really, really bad.
“I just felt we played really good over there in Game 4 — for the first half,” he said.
He paused for just a second, perhaps to allow everyone to remind themselves that the Wizards came out in the second half of Game 4 and scored 26 straight points.
“And then they just steamrolled us,” he said. “But I just saw some things from our group that I liked and I feel like tonight we did a good job continuing that.”
It was all there from Horford last night — the finesse, the precision, the muscle, even some panache. After an attempted layup in a crowd from Isaiah Thomas went around the rim and out, Horford thundered through the mass of humanity, put the ball through the hoop and then stopped and did a mini-version of that he-man, double-pump biceps thing.
And did we really see Horford and Thomas engaging in some pick-androll plays, with little Isaiah setting up the screens? They had been working on that for, what, months?
“Not at all,” said Horford. “Credit to Isaiah. I was talking to (Celtics assistant coach) Jay Larranaga before the game and he was, like, ‘Isaiah might come over and screen for you.’ I’ve never done that before. He did it, he set a great screen, and I scored a couple of times. It was nice for a change.
“It was fun, it was definitely fun.”
It was fun, too, for Danny Ainge. Not just because the Celtics won the game and now have two tries to get past Washington and into the Eastern Conference finals, but also because it was yet another spring day in which Al Horford showed that maybe he’s worth that $113 million after all.