Annually, there will always be that old, ringless player whose team made the NBA Playoffs and one many would love to see go all the way and win a ring for himself. In the 2022 NBA Finals, that guy is Boston Celtics big man Al Horford, who is just four wins away from finally reaching the pinnacle of his career in the league.

While he knows that the job isn't done yet, Horford is cherishing this moment in his NBA career, which is perfectly understandable, considering how long he's waited for this to come.

Via John Schuhmann of NBA.com:

“Just didn’t know how to act,” he said. “Just caught up, excited. A lot of hard work. I’ve been a part of a lot of great teams, a lot of great teammates, and I’m so proud of this group.

It took 141 games in the playoffs for Horford to get his first taste of an NBA Finals berth. He was a part of eight Atlanta Hawks teams that reached the playoffs but got stopped along the way in the postseason during the prime years of the Boston Celtics team that had the Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce. There was also LeBron James and the Miami Heat and those LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers squads which reigned the East for the most part of the last decade. After his stint with the Hawks, he had his first tenure with the Celtics, where he made the NBA Playoffs three times. In the 2019-20 NBA season, Horford was with the Philadelphia Sixers, who got eliminated in the first round, ironically, by the Celtics.

Horford did not go all through that just to make things easy for the Golden State Warriors in the 2022 NBA Finals, so expect the 35-year-old vet to empty his tank in the upcoming series.