Boston Celtics: Al Horford’s Versatility
The Boston Celtics brought in Al Horford this summer to anchor their front line and bring stability to their roster. What will the versatile center bring to the table?
It’s a random NBA basketball game in the dead of winter. After a pick and roll, Al Horford is now switched onto the opposing point guard. That’s no problem. Horford can easily switch onto smaller players from time to time. As the smaller guard drives into the lane he notices that he can’t use his speed to easily to get to the rim like he can against lumbering centers around the league. He awkwardly takes a contested shot at the rim, which misses.
Horford grabs the rebound and begins sprinting down the floor with the ball, like a point guard in a big man’s body. As he approaches the top of the key he begins to survey the court. The closest defender closes out hard towards Horford, worried he’ll unleash a three-pointer. Horford then whips a pass to a cutting teammate for an easy bucket.
It’s a sequence Atlanta Hawks fans know all too well. There are different variations, but the result is always the same. Al Horford uses his Swiss Army knife of skills to impact the game on both ends of the court.
Boston Celtics fans will become familiar with that this season. Adding Horford to their roster makes the Celtics a top-three team in the Eastern Conference and may send the Hawks tumbling towards the bottom half of the playoff picture.
Horford is an easy player to fall in love with. He was a fan favorite, now a legend, in Atlanta. It won’t take Celtics fans long to fall head over heels. He is every cliche about sports wrapped into one player. He’s a hard worker. He’s a good teammate. He’s a leader in the locker room. Most importantly, he’s a damn good basketball player, and a versatile one at that. In the era of pace and space, Horford is what you want your center to look like.
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Put simply, he can shoot, he can pass, and he can play defense. He impacts the game in several areas. If one facet of his game is slumping he can more than make up for it in another way.
He was one of three players last season to average more than 15 points, 7 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks per game while shooting 34 percent or better from three-point range. The other two were Pau Gasol and Karl-Anthony Towns.
As a passer, Horford can act as a quarterback from the top of the key , the elbow, or by finding cutters when he draws double teams in the post. He averaged 3.2 assists per game last season, third highest in the league for a center. His 2.46 assists to turnover ratio led all centers by a wide margin. He makes plays without being a turnover machine.
He reads the floor like a point guard, and somehow passes with the precision of one too.
The only big man currently on his level in terms of passing brilliance would be Marc Gasol. Those two are in a class all their own. Horford’s playmaking should open up shots for Jae Crowder, Avery Bradley, and Isaiah Thomas, making Boston’s 10th ranked offense from last season get even better.
Defensively is where Horford is most underrated by folks that haven’t followed his career closely. He doesn’t have the look of an elite shot blocker, so it’s easy to assume he’s not much of a rim protector. That’s just inaccurate. He may not be Bill Russell, but he’s a solid rim protector.
The Atlanta Hawks had the second best defensive rating in the NBA last season, allowing only 101.4 points per 100 possessions. Horford’s defensive versatility was a large reason why. Horford can switch on almost any screen and play passable defense on smaller and more athletic players. He’s an excellent position defender and rarely gets beaten one on one. Consider this passage from a recent ESPN stats and info piece about his defensive fit with Boston.
"Horford ranks as one of the league’s best post defenders, as shown through video review. Horford defended 262 direct posts in the 2015-16 regular season (that’s a post-up attempt in which a player shoots, is fouled, turns the ball over or passes to a shooter), more than any other player in the NBA.He allowed players to score 0.84 points per direct post. Among the top 12 players with the most direct posts defended, only defensive player of the year runner-up Draymond Green allowed fewer points per direct post (0.72).Horford had a career-high 121 blocked shots in 2015-16 and will fill a need there; the Celtics ranked 22nd in the NBA in blocked shots. Last season was the first in which he played all 82 games."
He and Paul Millsap formed one of the best interior defensive pairing in the league last season, and Horford’s 4.5 defensive win shares were 8th best in the NBA.
He only blocked 1.7 shots per 36 minutes last season, but the way he alters shots is arguably as valuable as a blocked shot. Forcing a player into a bad shot that your team can then rebound is better than swatting a shot out of bounds like Hassan Whiteside. Substance over style.
This passage from a 2015 Zach Lowe article does a great job summing up his offensive versatility, and how he can fit into almost any offensive system.
"Horford has blended in beautifully. Malleability might be Horford’s best NBA skill. It’s harder to construct rosters around stars who are great at some things and bad at others. A post-up big man who can’t play defense needs certain types of players around him. A pick-and-roll dunker with no shooting range can function only amid pristine spacing. Horford can grow in any environment. On offense, he’s dangerous doing anything out of the pick-and-roll — the play that greases Atlanta’s engine. If his big-man partner is a spot-up shooter — Mike Scott, Pero Antic — Horford is explosive enough to slice down the line for dunks. Hand the offense to someone else and Horford is a spot-up sniper who can stand 20 feet from the hoop and drag his guy away from the action."
Offensively Horford is as good as he’s ever been. He’s averaged at least 15 points per game in each of his last four seasons, and he’s getting better. Throughout his career Horford has been a reliable post scorer and mid-range shooter, but in the last few seasons he’s added an outside shot to his arsenal. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s a legitimate weapon. Especially in an NBA landscape that has become increasingly reliant on big men stretching the floor with outside shooting.
In 2014-15 Horford made 30.6 percent of his three-point attempts on only 36 attempts. Last season his attempts skyrocketed to 256, while his three-point percentage also jumped to 34.4 percent. The only qualifying center to shoot better than Horford from deep last season is his new teammate in Boston, Kelly Olynyk. The league average percentage from three-point range usually hovers around 35 percent, Horford approaching that mark during his first season of shooting three-point shots at a high volume is impressive.
Under Brad Stevens, it’s easy to imagine Horford’s three-point shooting volume increasing even further. Horford lingering around the perimeter as a three-point shooting threat also gives him more opportunities to create for teammates with his outstanding passing. The guy truly does it all, and the Eastern Conference should be terrified of what he brings to a Boston team that won 48 games last season without him.
Preseason stats are largely meaningless, but Horford seems to be gelling with his new teammates. Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe says he’s “fitting in nicely” so far.
"In his two preseason appearances, Horford is a plus-42, as the Celtics starters dominated in their stretches against the 76ers and Hornets. The fact that the starters — Isaiah Thomas, Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder, Amir Johnson, and Horford — have blended well together is not a surprise. It’s how quickly they’ve done it that is the stunner.“That’s encouraging,” Horford said. “We still have some work to do, but I just feel like these guys here have made it easy for me. I’m just kind of playing my game. Isaiah has given me the ball at the right times. So has Avery. They’re finding me in different ways, so for me it’s just getting used to playing the style that we’re trying to play. It’s only two games, but it looks good.”"
I got the chance to watch him in person for the first time on October 6th in a preseason game against the Charlotte Hornets. His impact was already obvious. In that game he showed off his wide array of skills, finishing the game with 13 points, eight rebounds, and three assists in only 19 minutes played. Boston fans hope that is just a small glimpse of what is to come.
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The Celtics want to go from competitive to contender this season. If they can successfully make that leap Al Horford and his jack of all trades production will be a big reason why.