SAN FRANCISCO – Everything the Warriors imagined when they pinpointed Al Horford as a main offseason target in NBA free agency came together in a Christmas culmination for the 39-year-old who missed the previous seven games over the last three weeks.
The ability to stretch the floor as a center who’s a legitimate 3-point threat came back to life immediately upon Horford’s return in a 126-116 win against the Dallas Mavericks at Chase Center. So did his basketball smarts in Year 19, his rebounding, being a difference maker defensively and imprinting his impact in multiple ways. This was what made the Warriors sink even further into trusting experience instead of Father Time’s worries.
Horford, in only 11 minutes off the bench, scored a season-high 14 points and had four rebounds, two assists and two steals.
His coaches and teammates after the win spoke to what a healthy Horford does for them.
“It’s the vision of what he would add to our team from the jump,” Steph Curry said. “I know that he’s battled a lot of injuries and absences and he’s trying to, personally, I’m sure, find a rhythm. That availability is huge.
“But it’s why he is who he is. Why he’s had the career that he’s had and why he’s such a coveted big man, because what he can do.”
The Warriors took off shortly after Horford entered his first game since Dec. 4. They were ahead 18-15 when he came in with five and a half minutes remaining in the first quarter. He played the rest of the quarter and the Warriors were then up by 12 points going into the second. Golden State scored 22 points the rest of the first quarter with Horford, and he scored 12 of them.
All from behind the 3-point line, fitting right into the Warriors’ plans from months ago.
Horford’s first two threes pushed the Warriors’ lead from two to five on catch-and-shoot opportunities. The third he made gave the Warriors a nine-point lead off a perfect pick-and-pop with Jimmy Butler. And the fourth came with some old-school flair in the final seconds.
Each of Horford’s last three 3-pointers was assisted by Butler.
“Got Al (Horford) back, big gator,” Butler said.
“Definitely spreads the floor, challenges shots at the rim, high-IQ type player,” he continued. “Then he’s just really, really fun to play with. As long as you’re out there having fun, being joyful, ball’s moving, you’re guarding, you’re competing, that’s who he is, that’s who he’s always been.”
Butler and Horford’s games really click. They go together and make sense whenever they share the floor. For seven-plus minutes, Butler and Horford were part of a lineup alongside De’Anthony Melton, Brandin Podziemski and Will Richard that outscored the Mavs 26-17.
There was a sequence in that span where Horford pivoted from guarding a driving Caleb Martin to picking his pass off in the paint and taking it down the court before dishing a bounce pass for Butler to take off two feet for a two-handed jam.
In a 10-point win, Curry believes Horford’s stretch of making four threes in three minutes and 43 seconds changed the game.
“That run that they had basically won us the game at the end of the first quarter, start of the second,” Curry said. “That was the difference in giving us a little bit of separation where we could also have that cushion the rest of the game.”
Warriors coach Steve Kerr indicated during his pregame press conference that he wasn’t sure if Horford was even going to play despite finally being medically cleared and having gone through practices and scrimmages. Kerr wants to keep building continuity after landing on a starting lineup that includes 7-foot center Quinten Post. Trayce Jackson-Davis also has come on strong and re-entered the center rotation.
Kerr even admitted after the win that he couldn’t have predicted Horford would look as good as he did. He and Horford talked before the game and Kerr told him he really didn’t know when he’d go in the game because of wanting to keep Jackson-Davis’ rotation.
Well, he was able to accomplish both. Kerr went to Horford at the 5:27 mark of the first quarter, replacing Moses Moody and keeping Jackson-Davis in the game. Always the smaller team, the Warriors all of a sudden had two 6-foot-9 centers on the floor, one who can get busy from downtown and another who throws down dunks.
“That’s a big lineup. Two-big lineup today,” Melton noted.
Jackson-Davis’ first dunk was off a screen for Curry at the top of the arc one possession before Horford made his first three. The two played with each other for a little more than two minutes on a night where they combined for 24 points, with Horford hitting four threes and Jackson-Davis being a threat at the rim, where he had three dunks, a cutting finger roll and a tip-in.
“We can be more active on defense, honestly,” Melton also said. “Having those bigs out there, and with Al, especially the way he came back and was ready to shoot – we love it. We’ve been missing it. [Shooting from 3-point range] 4-for-6 is definitely something that we need. And also defensively, it allows us to sometimes grab rebounds and let Trayce run the floor and get all our wins out in transition, too. Al being out there and having more size allows us to finish possessions off.”
It’s not just that Horford missed the Warriors’ last seven games. It’s that he had only played in two since playing four straight games in six days five and a half weeks ago from Nov. 12 through the 18th. It’s that he isn’t playing both games of a back-to-back and the start of the schedule was full of them, which has been one of many factors why Horford has found trouble in getting his rhythm.
Really, it’s that Horford in his first 13 games couldn’t buy a bucket if he won the Powerball and was shooting 32.1 percent from the floor and 29.8 percent on threes while looking his age more often than not.
As celebrated and displayed on Christmas, the story now can be a reminder of who Horford still can be when healthy. If he can maintain that health and build some rhythm, a new element of the Warriors is unlocked. The sizable one they dreamt of this past summer.
“We have a rotation, we’re healthy,” Kerr said. “Getting Al back today was huge. The way he shot it the first half, just creating that separation. Our centers are all playing well. I think QP, it’s funny because QP has not shot the ball well but he’s played really, really well defensively. To have Trayce Jackson-Davis out there doing the same, defending, blocking shots, and then to have Al … suddenly we have a pretty solid front line, should we choose to go big.”
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