I mean as soon as he leaves the Celtics made the finals soo....

With a team that was almost completely constructed by Ainge soo….

almost

The only addition Brad Stevens added was Derrick white

So yeah almost

Ainge never would have given up a 1st round pick to bring back an aging Al Horford that many around the league considered to be a toxic contract at the time.

Stevens brought back Horford who had the entire 2020-2021 season off thanks to OKC benching him and a pretty nice hiatus in the 2019-2020 season as well, he was completely fresh for their run this year and easily their 3rd or 4th most important player all season long.

Lol Horford was insanely good, I’m arguably his biggest fan, I even tried to tell you how good he was and you constantly kept shooting me down… but easily 3rd most important player? Come on, he’s the least important out of our starting 5. Maybeeee 2nd least. No knock on him, but JT, Rob, JB and I think Smart are more crucial to our success than Horford.

depends on the matchup. in the Milwaukee series Horfords advanced metrics point to him being the clear 3rd most valuable player on the team

against a wing heavy team that wants to spam 3s like the Warriors, Smart is a more valuable piece

theoretically Rob is more valuable if he's available, but since he tore his meniscus he missed too many games or was hampered by still being in recovery phase

this is why I said he was 3rd/4th because its a matchup dependent case between him and Smart given that Timelord wasn't himself for pretty much the whole playoffs

No, you said “all season long” and both Rob and Smart were clearly more valuable during the regular season.

They have talked about Timelord fading, this is the third season in a row now he is fading in big games. DeRozan is most famous for fading. Just reminding yall.

And I don't buy the 'injury recovery' time excuse.

Giannis broke his leg in that game 2 or w/e last year and came back the next day and dropped 40. then 50 after that

This post was edited by Crunkt on Jul 17 2022 03:02pm