Horf Being in the Finals Is a Real Kick in the Pants
Horf Being in the Finals Is a Real Kick in the Pants
Man, it fucking blows that Horf is good again and playing in the Finals. With Boston, no less.
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The thing you need to remember about Al Horford's Sixers tenure is that he was bad in his one season here.
Not a particularly controversial statement, of course, since most Philly sports fans probably hold his time in the City of Brotherly Love in the same esteem as Freddy Garcia, Nnamdi Asomugha and those bullies who locked Hayley Joel Osment in the attic in The Sixth Sense. But I do feel like a disproportionate amount of ire for the Horf Year is directed at management for signing him in the first place, since it never made particular sense for the Sixers to earmark such a large percentage of their yearly budget on a guy who played the same position as the team's most important player. Fair, but the reason it was a disaster wasn't because he was an awkward positional fit with Embiid; the reason it was a disaster was because the player we got straight-up stunk for most of the season -- clanking threes, proving ineffective in the post and on the boards, and blowing so many easy bunnies that he was getting John Fogerty's "Centerfield" stuck in Sixers fans' heads every night with his frustration-clapping.
And the playoffs -- good lord, the playoffs. With Ben Simmons out for the series and the Sixers facing the Boston squad who just let Horf walk a season earlier, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for him to step up and belatedly earn those Al Horford Appreciator shirts. And for a brief moment, it seemed like he would: Horford's one flashbulb moment of the series came towards the end of Game One's third quarter, when he muscled Jayson Tatum in the paint for a short scoop, got the offensive rebound (he never got the offensive rebound during the regular season), sank the putback (he NEVER sank the putback during the regular season) to put the Sixers up four, and then hollered in Tatum's face (the only emotion he showed during the regular season was disapproval during the Towns-Embiid scrap). It seemed he had turned a corner; unfortunately a 500-foot cliff lay just around the bend. Big Al finished the series averaging an invisible 7 and 7, making four total free throws and zero threes, with as many fouls as combined blocks and assists, as the Sixers went on to lose Game One and the next three after that.
This is all to say: Man, it fucking blows that Horf is good again and playing in the Finals. With Boston, no less.
It hurts when a previously good big-money player fizzles for your franchise -- but it's not automatically unforgivable. That happens. No good basketball player is good forever, and if the team that previously employed him actually lets your squad get its grubby paws on him, chances are usually decent that endpoint is coming sooner than later. Elton Brand was a huge dud for Philly, but he tried his hardest, helped gut out a playoff win or two, and then did nothing else of importance the remainder of his NBA playing career once we let him go. It was the classy way to bust out, and we'll love him forever for it. Meanwhile, George Hill was never anything more than useless during his time as a Sixer last year, and I spent all season spitting upon his name's mention -- but because he was just as putrid for Milwaukee this year, I can already feel the animus fading a little. It was never personal for George Hill; turns out he just sucks now.
No, the real act of war is to bomb as a Sixer and then find the groove again as soon as you're back in enemy colors. And all Horf apparently needed following his Sixers tenure was a gap year in OKC to get his legs back, then right to Boston where he's now made it to the NBA finals for the first time in his career. (That's as a power forward, btw -- he's starting next to Robert Williams III, a much more land-locked C than Embiid has ever been, providing just one more dash of chlorine in the eyes of Process Trusters.) He's averaging 12 and 10 in these playoffs for Boston, with a true shooting percentage 13 points higher -- 13!!!! -- than in his previous playoff run for Philly. In a critical Game Four win for the C's against Milwaukee, he scored 30 points; not only was that more than he scored in any one of his final 65 games as a Sixer, it was more than he scored in his entire Philly playoff history combined. He's basically like The Batman; just give him a shot of the Green Stuff and within seconds he's on his feet and dropping dudes off buildings.
Is he actually that much better now than the Sixers version of Horford? I dunno; I'd be lying if I said I watched more than a minute of the conference finals and certainly his stat lines from that series seemed to get less impressive the further it went. Maybe if you asked Boston fans a couple months from now, they'd howl with laughter about how they actually made the finals with Horf, before reciting the 30 things he did on a nightly basis that absolutely drove them batty. All I know is that the handful of times I tuned into Boston this postseason, he was executing drop steps and sinking short hooks in the paint, moving those footsies to stay in front of opposing wings, and passing up good shots to find his teammates great shots. And let me tell you -- I did not care for it.
The list of reasons to be despondent as a Sixers fan at present is not a short one. We just had to spend two weeks avoiding an apparently unwatchable Celtics-Heat series that the Celtics ultimately won and the Heat didn't even have the decency to totally embarrass themselves during. Joel Embiid is only in the news currently for getting snubbed in awards voting, getting surgery in all 10 fingers and at least seven toes, or getting frisky online with Jimmy Butler. Daryl Morey is on the clock to figure out how he's gonna make the rest of this team sexy enough to keep JoJo's eyes from wandering too far too soon. We have our pick this year after all, but not a whole lot else to look forward to this summer. And now, we also have to deal with the possibility of Screaming Horf returning in homage to Kevin Garnett's Anything Is Possible moment as Dave Silver hands the Larry O'Brien trophy to Michael Chiklis or whoever. Frustration-clap your hands, everybody, for yet another longest Philadelphia 76ers offseason ever.