Yes, but the 76ers are not getting how Al has performed for the last decade either.
Well, Al has been a center basically his whole career, except I guess when he played beside Zaza in Atlanta.
So again, whose fault is it that he's playing out of position and doing it badly?
You are stretching pretty hard here Phosita. He has played the close to the last 10 games without Embid and is still shooting 44% from field and 26% from 3 in those games. He is also visibly slowing down on defense. Is he being done a disservice by playing out of position at times? Sure, but you can't just gloss over all his numbers because of that.
I won't argue with you about whether Al is getting long in the tooth and if his game is suffering as a result. I'm sure that it is. Admittedly I do not watch the Sixers very much because I don't like them or the way they play.
With that said, Al was still a really valuable and efficient player his last year in Boston, and the main difference between last year and this year for Al is the team that he's on, i.e. the players that are around him.
If Al were playing from the start of this season on a team that used him correctly (i.e. as a point center with players who can shoot around him), I expect his production would be much closer to what it's been.
Now, even if that were the case, the contract might still look pretty bad. They gave a guy with a lot of miles on him a long term deal that will take him into his late 30s at basically max value. No matter what, that's probably going to be a bit of an albatross. If Horford were the missing piece that was going to propel them to a title, that would be worth it. But that doesn't appear to be the case, and it's not surprising. Horford is a center and I never expected that he would look good playing alongside Embiid (an oversized center), Simmons (a non-shooting playmaking power forward) and Harris (a stretch 4).