Boston Celtics: Studs and Duds from C’s unnecessarily tight win over IND

Boston Celtics dud: Al Horford

While this game against the Pacers may have been a game to remember for one of the C’s starting bigs, it was certainly one to forget for another as Al Horford struggled to make a true impact for Boston.

Frankly, it just looked as though the Celtics ended up playing better when their veteran power forward was off the floor, and it seems that the coaching staff realized this as well as Ime Udoka benched him early in the fourth quarter after seeing his squad giving up eight straight points and wound up never looking back, as he didn’t see another minute of action until the closing seconds of overtime solely for rebounding purposes.

Despite having gotten off to an impressive start to his return season with the Boston Celtics, the five games leading into this matchup against Indiana have been unbelievably rough for Horford, particularly on the scoring department as he’s averaged just 5.4 points on 32 percent shooting from the floor and 20 percent shooting from deep during this stretch.

Monday was simply just a continuation of this lackluster brand of production as he put up just three points and seven boards on just 33 percent shooting from the floor.

Let’s hope the big man can snap out of this cold stretch as we move on through the rest of the season, otherwise the C’s are almost destined to continue finding themselves in tightly contested outings as they have of late.