Horford is just a crappy player who happened to get 24 and 12 against a very good defense the other night.
Our defence was laughable the entire first half, and if you actually watched the game you would know that Horford did NOT have to work hard for those points.
It's not like we were throwing everything at him, and he was finding ways to score anyway. We more or less gave him probably 15 of 16 of his 24 points by putting him at the line with stupid unnecessary fouls, and by allowing him wide open jumpers with our utterly lazy defence.
He got a one or two easy inside shots which came as a result of Sully's embarrassing defensive effort (Sully made no effort to force him out of the paint and let him get too close to the basket, so Horford basically shot straight over him effortlessly).
IIRC there were one or two nice shots/moves by Horford, but we gifted him most of those points.
Even Millsap was surprisingly unimpressive yesterday.
Really Teague was the only guy on that Hawks team who made some genuinely impressive plays. There were a few really nice moves/shots Teague made that couldn't have been defended any better, but he made them anyway. He actually had me saying out loud "[dang] - have to admit that was a pretty impressive move".
He was really the only guy on that Hawks team though that I would really say had an impressive game. Everybody else played pretty average, and we could have easily won that game if we didn't spend the entire first half digging our own graves (as seems to be the trend for us lately).
Tommy is 100% right - Horford is not a great player. He is a
good player for sure, but he isn't a
great one.
He's not the type of guy who you can depend on to carry a team night in and night out, because he's not a dominate defensive player and he's almost completely incapable of creating his own offence.
Horford is the type of player who needs help to get his points - he can really only hurt you if you give him wide open jumpers, if you allow him big mismatches on the inside, or if you voluntarily put him at the line (since he doesn't get there with any regularity on his own).
He's a good player because he is a good shooter and a good finisher, so when you make those mistakes and give him those chances he is
will consistently make you pay for it. He's not a great player because if you don't give him those opportunities, he'll find it extremely difficult to make any real offensive impact.
Horford actually reminds me a lot of Sully in terms of his style of game, because like Sully:
* He gets most of his offence from either outside jumpers
* He rarely posts up, and only really scores inside when he is open or has a favourable match-up
* He rarely gets to the foul line
* He isn't a natural paint protector or perimeter defender, but can play solid team defence
with the main differences being that Horford is a more consistent shooter, a better finisher around the basket and has better basketball IQ (i.e. takes what the defence gives him, and doesn't force bad shots).
Those three things are of course quite significant, which is why Horford is a better player then Sully. However Horford is not a great player for the same reason that I don't think Sully will ever be a great player - he can't create something from nothing, he can only get his in the flow of the game.
Horford is a nice complementary player. If you have a big time star who can demand a lot of attention on offence (hence leading to lots of open looks and mismatches for other guys) then Horford could really be dangerous in that type of environment. But if he is your go-to guy he's not going to look nearly as good.
Topic: Heinsohn: Horford is not a great player (Read 7862 times)