It’s time for Horford to be at his best
The Sixers lost in the Eastern Conference semifinals for a second consecutive spring in 2019, regrouped, made some reasonable changes, and declared themselves better.
Then they added Al Horford. That’s when they declared themselves whole.
The investment, $109,000,000 smeared over four years, was high. So were the numbers on his basketball odometer. He would be 34 by the next time the Sixers would be in the playoffs, but if he could just do one thing, one time, one year, it all would be worth the investment.
All the Sixers would need, they felt, was for Al to be Al. The rest would fall into place.
Brett Brown was chatting about that Saturday evening, shortly before the Sixers’ reopener against Indiana. He knew that his team was about
to wrap up what had been a bittersweet regular season with eight games in 14 days before it became Al Time. That’s when the Sixers would need the Al Horford who won not one, but two national championships at the University of Florida, who soon will be in the playoffs for the 12th time in his 13 NBA seasons, and who has invariably revealed an extra layer of toughness in the warm-weather months.
Conveniently or otherwise, the months the Sixers will be involved in the postseason will be warmer than ever.
“It’s going to be difficult for us to maximize what we can do without Al being Al, as you put it,” Brown said, responding to a question. “What does that look like? His ability to make threes and to really stretch the floor. If you had to jump on one thing, for me, that’s it, offensively.”
Before Saturday, Horford had played 60 games for the Sixers. Too few were as planned. He was never really comfortable in the same frontcourt as Joel Embiid, and it wasn’t going to change. Though it wasn’t the only reason Brown reconfigured his preferred starting lineup for the remainder of a split season, it was somewhere in his coaching algorithm.
Even with whatever discomfort Horford may have felt when alongside Embiid early in games, it didn’t explain how his three-point accuracy could plummet from his career average of 36.1 percent to 33.7. The shots he was attempting were not forced or unwise. He was open. He just missed too many. And Embiid could not be blamed for that.
All along, though, there were hints that Horford wasn’t right. His age didn’t help. But, as it turns out, it was more, as during the hiatus it was leaked that he was haunted by pain in his knee and hamstring all season. That a veteran who never resisted going body-to-body with an opponent to win a possession would trend creaky in his mid-30s was something the Sixers might have thought through better before going for that buck-oh-nine contract. But the four-month layoff may have given them a virtual escape clause.
“I probably wasn’t where I wanted to be,” Horford said, during the recent training period. “I’m not going to make excuses. But right now I’m in a much better place. The time off for me was beneficial. Now, the biggest challenge for us coming back is doing everything at a game-intensity level.”
So there it was, everything the Sixers had planned for Horford stuffed in one handy comment: His hamstrings and knees are at their best … and his game face is, too.
The Sixers hidden in the BubbleDome, they are on the honor system to reveal what they can from practice sessions. The leakage from those workouts has been that Horford has been shooting well, and in the final summer-camp scrimmage, he scored 11 points in the third quarter of a loss to Dallas, including a three-pointer. So, there have been signs.
“I think it’s trending in a way that we want and that he wants to be,” Brown said. “And defensively, just that paint protection and rim protection has been strong.
“And we need Al to be Al to reach what I think is a pretty special potential.”
The first 65 games of the Sixers season were good, but not quite as advertised. They were dominating at home, dazed on the road, and the sixth best team in the Eastern Conference. The analytics say they have a favorable schedule for the final eight games, not that analytics can predict a clumsy whistle or a late clanked free throw. But Brown’s team is going to be in the playoffs and have a good chance in the next two weeks to bolster their seeding.
In many ways, that makes what is about to happen Al Horford’s time, that portion of a basketball season when he can play to what has been an All-Star level.
“Personally, I am excited,” Horford said. “And as a team, I think it’s fair to say we’re excited too. We didn’t know what was going to happen with our season. Then we got to Orlando and to the point where we are actually playing. So this is a new opportunity for us as a group, and we’re really excited about it.
“We’re healthy for the most part. And I am looking forward to get it started and really growing with this group.”
That was the plan in October, not that anyone expected it to be that way again in August. But basketball sometimes evolves on its own schedule. So there the Sixers were again Saturday, confident as always. With Al Horford healthy, OK with his new role, and ready to be himself again, that made them about as whole as possible when it matters the most.