I don’t think any NBA players “hate” each other anymore, or at least not like they used to. Even when Draymond Green spinning-back-fisted Jusuf Nurkic, the NBA (including Nurkic) world sympathy-bombed him by saying he simply needed to get help. Gone are the days of Bill Laimbeer clotheslines or Danny Ainge oh-I-totally-didn’t-mean-to-trip-you. It’s a buddy buddy league, for the most part.
But there are a few player rivalries left, and two of them suspiciously include Al Horford. His tussles with Joel Embiid are well documented, but people may forget his one true nemesis; the man who has actually won a ring, and produced some of the most individually destructive performances against Boston this century: Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Monday night’s win saw another showdown between the two. Horford came out locked in, donning his spread-eagle defensive stance and denying Giannis at the rim. This may seem like something he just… does at this point, but it’s truly a sight to behold.
Can we humans actually comprehend how ridiculous it is that the 38-year-old Horford sees Giannis freaking Antetokounmpo barreling towards him and thinks nothing other than “everyone else clear out… I got this?” Either Horford has found the fountain of youth in like… Framingham, or he has a special ability to get amped for the toughest matchups. He didn’t score that much — Payton Pritchard had that covered (which is itself ridiculous) — but he was turbo-locked on Giannis the whole night, refusing to allow age to limit his freakish effort.
Where does this iron determination come from? (places history cap on) Well, this all started a little over two years ago.
It was the 2022 Eastern Conference semifinals, when the pre-death lineup Celtics somehow vanquished the greatest player I’ve quite literally ever seen play basketball: Giannis Antetokounmpo between May 1st and May 15th of 2022. He was unstoppable, with two 20+ point and 20+ rebound games, three 40-burgers. It took the greatest game of Jayson Tatum’s career to pull out Game 6, but people forget the absolute grudge match it took to set it up.
The lone man standing in his way was some psycho version of Al Horford, who kinda lost his marbles in Game 4 to the tune of 30 points and an unimaginably memorable nodding clip followed by this slam where he may-or-may-not have elbowed Giannis in the face.
This is a legendary Horford moment, and you know he never turned off the stove that burned the house down in 2022. He’s just been keeping it on simmer.
Monday night was another chapter, and proved Horford’s special place on this Celtics team. No one else is equipped with the proper levels of maturity and single-minded focus to stare one of the most physically dominant players of all time and say that he’s got this. Who else is going to produce this photo?
Kristaps Porzingis may be this team’s true X-factor, but if Horford retires at the end of this year, he will not be easy to replace. He’s more impactful than his stats suggest, and slowed down a player that will steamroll you if given the chance. The Celtics will miss what he brings big time, so let’s enjoy it while we have it.
