As Boston Goes Small, Al Horford Becomes Even More Important
The Boston Celtics are leaning on Al Horford more than ever with their small ball attack
Brad Stevens looks like he has decided that the Boston Celtics need to ride their guards in small ball lineups in order to comeback in this series. The Celtics have much better guard depth, and that is where Stevens feels he can find players he can trust. The smaller the Celtics go, however, the important Al Horford becomes.
With Robin Lopez forced off the floor for huge portions of the game, Horford was able to run wild. The Celtics forced the Bulls to adjust to their small ball, and by opening everything up on the inside, Horford was able to have a much better impact on both ends.
The Celtics finally reached the breaking point where Horford was the only big that could get a decent amount of minutes, but that means a bad game from him would be even more disastrous. By going small, the Celtics open things up on the inside just with how their own players are positioned. When you take into account that their small ball limited Lopez to just 21 minutes, and Horford may be the player that benefits the most.
The Celtics need Horford to be aggressive because he now has the space and often has the matchup that needs to be exploited. On defense, there were multiple times where Horford was able to come over and help on Jimmy Butler at the rim, disrupting many of his shots
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Horford’s freedom on defense is also helped by the loss of Rajon Rondo. The Celtics do not need to help on the point guard anymore, and Horford has one less threat to worry about exploiting him if he has to cheat over onto Butler.
Horford finished with one of his most impressive lines of the season with a team leading 18 points, a team leading eight rebounds, six assists, and another team leading four steals. Horford was the most impactful two way player, and the Bulls had no answer for it.
By going small Stevens put all of his confidence into his guard depth, but he also put that kind of confidence in Horford. If Horford has an off game, then the Celtics are left with no interior defense, and that plays in the Bulls’ strength. If Horford breaks down, then the Bulls will have a lot more easier buckets to attack.
In game three, nothing was easy for the Bulls. They had no where to attack the Celtics, so all it came down to was how much Butler or Dwyane Wade could create. Wade did initiate the one run they had in the game, but it is far too difficult to expect Butler and Wade to create the play every single time they are on offense, especially when they are dealing with some of the best one on one defensive guards in the league.
Horford is holding together a lot of what this defense can do, and he is a huge reason why they were so much better on that end in game three. The Celtics now know they have an opposing offense that can be attacked with Rondo out, and generating turnovers is how they take over games.
There has been a lot of speculation about Horford’s worth to the Celtics. In two out of three games so far Horford has been arguably the team’s best player, and that is the way it needs to stay. If him and Isaiah Thomas can be the two best players on the court, then the Bulls will not be able to keep up.
It may be unrealistic to expect the second unit to have as good of a game as they did on Friday. The second unit has been all over the place this year, and it is still hard to tell exactly how the end of the rotation will play out. Horford, however, is someone they need to be able to expect to play at this level all the time.
Thomas may not be satisfied with the scoring, but game three was his best game as a distributor. When Thomas and Horford are at their best it is because they are in control when they have the ball in their hands, and they can feed off each other.
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It has been made clear this season that it is not going to be enough if Thomas is the only one to step up, but he is the only one that the Celtics have seen do it consistently enough. That is why Horford is so important. With the position that Stevens has put him in with this small ball approach, you can expect the Celtics to go about as far as Horford can take them the rest of the way.