Al Horford is finally starting to look like the player who led the injury-depleted Boston Celtics to within a single victory of the NBA Finals last spring. Why? The veteran center is now healthier than he's been at any other point this season and Kyrie Irving is encouraging him to be aggressive.
“I think health is the first thing,” Horford said on Friday of his recently improved play, per Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald. “And then I think that Kyrie [Irving] has helped me a lot. Him and I spoke, and he’s been very helpful with just telling me to look for my shot and be more aggressive offensively. And that, coming from him, has given me more assertiveness to go out and be that.”
The 32-year-old was bothered by lingering left knee pain over the first seven weeks of the season. Calling the injury “one of those things that it just wasn't getting better,” Horford sat out seven consecutive games in mid-December, beginning with Boston's 133-77 drubbing over the Chicago Bulls on December 8th.
He returned to the court on December 23rd, and has missed just one game since, averaging 13.3 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.3 blocks per game while shooting 54.6 percent overall and 39.7 percent from beyond the arc — elite efficiency that easily trumps his relatively substandard shooting marks from before his respite. The Celtics are 19-9 over that stretch too, with the league's fourth-best net rating.
Horford has long been one of the league's most underrated players. Now that he's back at the level he reached last season, with his team reaping accompanying benefits on both sides of the ball, perhaps he will finally get the credit he's due.
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