Could Horford end up being the worst contract of offseason?

[celticsclay]

https://twitter.com/jonjohnsonwip/status/1225149725541830658?s=21

I know Philly brought Al in to be that veteran presence to help take care of issues like this. However, as last year’s Celtics team will tell you, good luck with that.

I am trying to remember, did Horford get vocal at any point last year like this? I don't remember him saying anything even when other players (brown, kyrie, etc) were. Am I forgetting something or did he just stay quiet?

[SHAQATTACK]

https://twitter.com/jonjohnsonwip/status/1225149725541830658?s=21

I know Philly brought Al in to be that veteran presence to help take care of issues like this. However, as last year’s Celtics team will tell you, good luck with that.

I am trying to remember, did Horford get vocal at any point last year like this? I don't remember him saying anything even when other players (brown, kyrie, etc) were. Am I forgetting something or did he just stay quiet?

He was pretty quiet I thought ,  was my impression anyhow

[RockinRyA]

Related to your comments that he is having a "top 50 impact to winning" how would you think the best way to demonstrate that is? For example you say he has more of an impact than Simmons despite al have 3.7 win shares and Ben Simmons having 6.7 despite playing on the same team and Harris is at 4.3

WS are based largely on counting stats.  Horford has poor counting stats.  But as I said, they Sixers are 11-6 in games with Horford without Embiid.  Last year, and every other year of Embiid's career, the Sixers have been a well below .500 team without Embiid on the court.  That isn't the case this year. 

As for actual metrics, you can look at on/off numbers and see that the Sixers are actually worse with Simmons on the court than when he is not on the court (-1.4 per 100 possessions).  Per 100 possessions, Harris is at +3 and Horford at +2.3, but when you realize that Horford is often in the game when Embiid is not, I think you can reasonably conclude that Horford impacts winning more than Harris.  Just looking at Embiid, I think illustrates that.  Every year of his career, before this one, Embiid was at least +10 per 100 possessions in the on/off numbers.  This year he is down to +3.4.  I believe a large reason for that is Horford, who quite simply is a better player by a wide margin to Embiid's prior back-up centers.

If you look at counting stats, you will never really see Horford's value, but he has always had a great impact to winning.  It is one of the reasons why every single team he has ever played on has made the playoffs (I'm not sure there are many players in league history with 12+ year careers that can say that).  Average Al's impact is much greater than the box score counting stats and always has been.

Your new argument is really that Horford has a greater impact on winning than Ben Simmons? I can tell you if Ben Simmons is injured and there are no other changes their betting line will move 2 to 2.5 points. If Horford is injured and not playing it does not move at all or perhaps .( points.

Shifts in betting lines have more to do with what the gambling population might do not what basketball experts or basketball analytics have to say.  Judging a players impact on a team based on what a casual fan or gambler might think isn’t smart

Not saying your wrong but it’s pretty flawed logic to use this to make your point

No offense, but your post is painfully wrong here and relies on a number of misconceptions. (As a little background I am a semi professional sports better and have been for a number of years. It has been a good stream of secondary income). A very common misconception is that lines move around because Joe from Jersey thinks Ben Simmons is a great player and he is either playing or not. In reality, there can be 2000 Joes from Jersey, but they are all betting 20-50 bucks based on that premise. Meanwhile, there are professionals and analytics services that run really complicated simulations of games over and over and looks for discrepancies in lines. If they find a discrepancy hundreds of thousands of dollars can be bet on it (and even more if they are a paid pick service). This moves the line 100x compared to the thoughts of Joe from Jersey. (Note you can have occasional exceptions to this if you have like a floyd mayweather betting 10 million on a game based on a whim, but even then the professional analytics driven people will pound it if the line gets out of whack and offset most of it. This is also just not happening on the average tuesday night regular season game which is the kind of thing we were discussing).

My friend who is a full professional, had an excel sheet that looked like a PHD dissertation entirely for trying to find inconsistencies in the first to score based on jump ball histories (the data wasn't strong enough to overcome the juice so he stopped the project). You can only imagine what a modeling looks like for an entire game. These lines are actually the most analytic and data driven of anything we can possibly find out there and many of the people that are serious about this pay for advanced data we as common fans don't even have access to. The joe schmo theory of "they just want equal money on both sides" is a dramatic oversimplification and really glosses over the fact that the lines are created and moved based on very very hard technical work by some of the smartest people in the world (and EXTREMELY data driven).

just to clarify, a team can lose and still cover the spread and the gamblers that bet on said team still win right?  so explain to me how gambling should factor into this considering that it doesnt have to do with the team winning and losing, it has to do with covering a spread

with all due respect to you and your friends spreadsheet, but im still not gonna use gambling lines to judge nba players and how bad their contracts are.

again, never said i thought you were wrong, in fact i think youre in the right here in this arguement.  But gambling lines?  sorry cant do it.

So first off, this isn't me and my friends spreadsheets. That is a pretty condescending way of responding to what I wrote. (It seems hard to believe you actually understood what I wrote that poorly, so just seems a bit jerky). Secondly, to elaborate lines are set up by the linesmakers (in some cases a very highly skilled stats person that is paid very well) and they generally move around based off professionals that use in depth data to inform there bets. In real life, it is a constant battle being a bunch of really smart statistical people trying to outsmart each other.

Taking it further, the casino linesmaker and the professionals that move the lines are using some data average fans have access to (all sorts of splits) and some that we don't. (On a side note Silver has been really ramping up stat tracking and injury report stuff in a result to make this stuff more readily available to everyone for legal betting). You said "Shifts in betting lines have more to do with what the gambling population might do not what basketball experts or basketball analytics have to say."

This is a complete nonsense statement because the actual "gambling population" where the significant money is happening is literally "basketball experts and basketball analytics people." I understand why people don't really get this. This is not how it is portrayed in movies and popular culture or even on sportscenter when they have the chalk analysts on. (or how most people talk about it with their friends that do it casually) It is a lot more palatable and interesting to have some guy smoking a cigar and saying he has a lean or gut feeling on the bulls getting a win (or using some really basic date like their record in their last 6 games against the spread) than to have some nerdy guy in front of a bunch of spreadsheets trying to explain why his 37 factor model (and explaining what each of the factors mean) predicts a score of 91-88 while the current line available only has 89-86. That is completely boring for most and 95% of the population finds advanced stats and modeling completely lame.

Now it is totally up to you if you want to get into to deciding if you want to accept lines and oddsmakers valuations of players and feel like it isn't interesting, but you should at least understand how it works and what the lines really are based off and move off of.  Me personally, knowing how much math goes into it, it does hold a lot of sway with me if linesmakers assign a very much significantly higher value to one player over another on the outcome of a game (certainly more than a poster on here using basic on off splits with no context), but I obviously can't force you to value that the same if you don't want to.

We're talking stats here.  Isn't the "gambling population" = "all the money wagered on an event"?

If the money moves, the line moves. No?

Ya'll arguing about the semantics.  Whether it's a few people moving the money, or a lot of people.  All that matters is the total money wagered.

What's he saying is the average Joe's, despite how many they are, doesnt amount to much. The few big money guys still overwhelm them by a huge margin and these guys use statistics.

[Phantom255x]

https://twitter.com/jonjohnsonwip/status/1225149725541830658?s=21

I know Philly brought Al in to be that veteran presence to help take care of issues like this. However, as last year’s Celtics team will tell you, good luck with that.

I am trying to remember, did Horford get vocal at any point last year like this? I don't remember him saying anything even when other players (brown, kyrie, etc) were. Am I forgetting something or did he just stay quiet?

He was pretty quiet I thought ,  was my impression anyhow

The thing is, I feel like Horford's always been the kind of quiet guy who just "goes with the flow". Maybe that's a "calming presence" and "veteran leadership" to the eyes of other players. But I doubt Horford has often been that guy in the locker room screaming at guys and rallying them with loud speeches lol

Brad Stevens and many others have mentioned Horford being the ultimate team player. It also leads me to think he's one of those guys that tries to avoid the drama, although unfortunately for him it's harder with last year's C's and this year's Sixers. But if you notice, he never really calls anyone out to the media, nor does he pick sides.

[seancally]

Just listened to a Windhorst/MacMullen/MacMahon podcast where they spoke a bit about the Sixers. Mentioned that Horford was getting booed the other night in a (narrow) win vs. the Bulls. Al was 0-6 and apparently fans IN PHILLY were booing him after shots.

I mean, look, Al Horford hasn't exactly set the world on fire, certainly hasn't lived up to his contract. And Boston fans are no strangers to booing the team. But I don't know if I can recall a game where Celtics fans booed a player for missing shots. Are Philly fans really blaming Al for this? I get he's the common thread between this year's PHI disaster and last year's BOS disaster, but I don't think he's the real issue here.

[Moranis]

Just listened to a Windhorst/MacMullen/MacMahon podcast where they spoke a bit about the Sixers. Mentioned that Horford was getting booed the other night in a (narrow) win vs. the Bulls. Al was 0-6 and apparently fans IN PHILLY were booing him after shots.

I mean, look, Al Horford hasn't exactly set the world on fire, certainly hasn't lived up to his contract. And Boston fans are no strangers to booing the team. But I don't know if I can recall a game where Celtics fans booed a player for missing shots. Are Philly fans really blaming Al for this? I get he's the common thread between this year's PHI disaster and last year's BOS disaster, but I don't think he's the real issue here.

especially weird since he had the best +- among the starters in that game, and played solid defense, rebounded ok, passed well, didn't turn it over, etc.  That is Al's game.  Does everything well (his crappy shooting night not with standing). 

[DefenseWinsChamps]

Just listened to a Windhorst/MacMullen/MacMahon podcast where they spoke a bit about the Sixers. Mentioned that Horford was getting booed the other night in a (narrow) win vs. the Bulls. Al was 0-6 and apparently fans IN PHILLY were booing him after shots.

I mean, look, Al Horford hasn't exactly set the world on fire, certainly hasn't lived up to his contract. And Boston fans are no strangers to booing the team. But I don't know if I can recall a game where Celtics fans booed a player for missing shots. Are Philly fans really blaming Al for this? I get he's the common thread between this year's PHI disaster and last year's BOS disaster, but I don't think he's the real issue here.

especially weird since he had the best +- among the starters in that game, and played solid defense, rebounded ok, passed well, didn't turn it over, etc.  That is Al's game.  Does everything well (his crappy shooting night not with standing).

I think most common fans don't appreciate the impact Horford has. He is a super role player in the mold of Igoudala who does all the little things to help the team win. Still, Iggy wasn't a champion until he played with superstars who could fulfill their roles.

You can't blame Al for Embiid and Simmons not yet figuring out how to lead a championship-level team.

[SDceltGuy]

Just listened to a Windhorst/MacMullen/MacMahon podcast where they spoke a bit about the Sixers. Mentioned that Horford was getting booed the other night in a (narrow) win vs. the Bulls. Al was 0-6 and apparently fans IN PHILLY were booing him after shots.

I mean, look, Al Horford hasn't exactly set the world on fire, certainly hasn't lived up to his contract. And Boston fans are no strangers to booing the team. But I don't know if I can recall a game where Celtics fans booed a player for missing shots. Are Philly fans really blaming Al for this? I get he's the common thread between this year's PHI disaster and last year's BOS disaster, but I don't think he's the real issue here.

especially weird since he had the best +- among the starters in that game, and played solid defense, rebounded ok, passed well, didn't turn it over, etc.  That is Al's game.  Does everything well (his crappy shooting night not with standing).

Al is a lot like Hayward in that they are both ok taking a back seat and being role players too often.  Its frustrating at times for fans when these guys are getting max money but don't seem to be producing like max guys, especially in games when you need them to produce points.

[celticsclay]

I think the fans are booing him at least partially for how the 76ers are using him. The numbers on him, Simmons and Embid together are all awful (while just about any other lineup with two of those guys is good and some art great). From what I have seen on liberty ballers basically 95% of the fans there want him to come off the bench and spell Embid 5-6 minutes in. However, I think the team has refused to do it so far because of optics. There really are not many 28 million a year bench players (i am wondering who is the highest one in the league right now, most similar could be Milsap but he is an expiring). It does make the contract look worse (and al's counting stats will probably decrease further) if they cut him down to about 25-27 minutes which is what he should be playing and  probably what he would be playing here based on his trajectory. One of the stupidest things about the 76ers the last few years is their concern with optics. It probably started with the thin skinned colangelo and his burner account, but things like the insistance on getting a fake first round pick for nerlen's noel etc, they just seem like a team that is terrified of negative press. There are certainly contenders for other "worst contracts in the league" but some of them, like Chris Paul, look way better than they did 6 months ago. Harris ironically is also another contender, but he is significantly younger and ironically, would look a lot better with Horford off the court.

[Moranis]

Oh I absolutely think Al should come off the bench now that they have Robinson and Burks it makes more sense as both are credible starters (one would start not both).  I'd bring Al in at like 4-5 minutes in and let him and Embiid play together for a couple of minutes before pulling Embiid out.  I believe that would most effectively use both him and Embiid. 

[seancally]

I think the fans are booing him at least partially for how the 76ers are using him. The numbers on him, Simmons and Embid together are all awful (while just about any other lineup with two of those guys is good and some art great). From what I have seen on liberty ballers basically 95% of the fans there want him to come off the bench and spell Embid 5-6 minutes in. However, I think the team has refused to do it so far because of optics. There really are not many 28 million a year bench players (i am wondering who is the highest one in the league right now, most similar could be Milsap but he is an expiring). It does make the contract look worse (and al's counting stats will probably decrease further) if they cut him down to about 25-27 minutes which is what he should be playing and  probably what he would be playing here based on his trajectory. One of the stupidest things about the 76ers the last few years is their concern with optics. It probably started with the thin skinned colangelo and his burner account, but things like the insistance on getting a fake first round pick for nerlen's noel etc, they just seem like a team that is terrified of negative press. There are certainly contenders for other "worst contracts in the league" but some of them, like Chris Paul, look way better than they did 6 months ago. Harris ironically is also another contender, but he is significantly younger and ironically, would look a lot better with Horford off the court.

The treatment of the Fultz injury backs this up. On that same pod I listened to Jackie Mac mentioned she'd heard he has an achilles thing bothering him, and that the team would do itself a favor to just come out and say he's a little banged up, we're resting him. I don't really get it.

[RPGenerate]

I think the fans are booing him at least partially for how the 76ers are using him. The numbers on him, Simmons and Embid together are all awful (while just about any other lineup with two of those guys is good and some art great). From what I have seen on liberty ballers basically 95% of the fans there want him to come off the bench and spell Embid 5-6 minutes in. However, I think the team has refused to do it so far because of optics. There really are not many 28 million a year bench players (i am wondering who is the highest one in the league right now, most similar could be Milsap but he is an expiring). It does make the contract look worse (and al's counting stats will probably decrease further) if they cut him down to about 25-27 minutes which is what he should be playing and  probably what he would be playing here based on his trajectory. One of the stupidest things about the 76ers the last few years is their concern with optics. It probably started with the thin skinned colangelo and his burner account, but things like the insistance on getting a fake first round pick for nerlen's noel etc, they just seem like a team that is terrified of negative press. There are certainly contenders for other "worst contracts in the league" but some of them, like Chris Paul, look way better than they did 6 months ago. Harris ironically is also another contender, but he is significantly younger and ironically, would look a lot better with Horford off the court.

I just think the Al Horford signing was incredibly idiotic. Sinking that much money on a player to be a backup makes no sense, and it was funny to hear Sixer fans flaunting around like it was a masterpiece of a signing. How many good role players could the 76ers have gotten if they didm't pay Al?

[nickagneta]

How different would this season be if Horford re-signed with Boston and Philly decided to sign Kemba somehow?

[RPGenerate]

How different would this season be if Horford re-signed with Boston and Philly decided to sign Kemba somehow?

I'm glad we aren't in that timelime lol. Kemba was the type of player the Sixers should have been targeting.

[celticsclay]

How different would this season be if Horford re-signed with Boston and Philly decided to sign Kemba somehow?

this is assuming we also don't have irving right? We are probably the 7 seed and philly probably makes the finals and possibly wins.