In June 2013, Al Horford and his wife, Amelia, traveled to Miami at the request of freshly hired Atlanta Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer. Finishing his tenure as a San Antonio Spurs assistant before fully transitioning into his new role, Budenholzer wanted Horford, a rising star with the Hawks, to see basketball at the highest level.
“He just wanted me to experience the atmosphere,” Horford remembered, “what it’s like being in the NBA Finals, and to see the level of play. It’s a different level of play when you play in the finals.”
Totally different, as Horford learned. The 2013 NBA Finals would go down as one of the most memorable series ever. Ray Allen rescued the Miami Heat in Game 6 with an unforgettable shot. LeBron James sealed Game 7 with a 17-foot jumper to give his team a second consecutive ring. The heartbreaking loss propelled the Spurs to return the following year with some of the most beautiful basketball ever played.
Horford didn’t have a ticket for the most dramatic parts of the series. He attended Game 2, which Miami won by running away late in the second half. James provided the exclamation point when he met Tiago Splitter at the rim to reject the big man’s block attempt. The Heat evened the series that night. And Horford, much like Budenholzer wanted, left the arena with a full appreciation of the intensity, focus and detail-oriented approach necessary to compete for titles.
The trip to Miami motivated Horford. It stayed with him. It crystallized how high he would need to climb to achieve his goals.
“In the NBA, that was the first time that I was exposed to that level of basketball,” Horford said. “Even though in Atlanta, we were making the playoffs, we were never getting that far. If anything, I would watch it on TV and things like that. But there’s a different feeling in the arena, the environment. You can see the players, you can see their interactions, you can appreciate their intensity in all those little things. And I feel that rubbed off on me in a good way.”
In the NBA, 12 years can represent multiple lifetimes. From that championship Heat team, only James remains in the league. After watching James for decades, competing against him for 17 seasons and admiring from afar the way he carried himself under the most intense spotlight, Horford, now 38, has a rare perspective of James’ legendary career.
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Horford was in high school in 2003 when James made his NBA debut. He played in the Eastern Conference throughout James’ reign during the 2010s. He ran into James’ teams four times in the playoffs, including three times in the Eastern Conference finals, and lost each time. As the seventh-oldest active player in the NBA, Horford understands as well as anyone the level of commitment needed to stay relevant for more than two decades in the ever-evolving league. Of course, James has stayed far more than just relevant while averaging 23.7 points, 7.5 rebounds and 9.0 assists at age 40 during his 21st NBA season. He is reaching historic milestones that were never touched before him.
Before meeting James for the first time this season, with the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers set to clash Thursday, Horford shared the lessons he learned from the superstar, his perspective on James’ remarkable longevity and his thoughts on James’ longtime domination of the Eastern Conference.
“Just mentally his focus, his determination, his consistency is to me what’s most impressive,” Horford said. “Because yeah, you have to put in the work physically, but I just think that mindset that he has, and he continues to drive and continues to defy different (limitations) that are being put on us as athletes. So that to me is the most impressive part.
“You talk about his NBA journey and he’s been playing basketball since a very small age, and that’s all he’s done and everything. But for him to take everything in stride and understand that he has to take care of his body, that he has to commit to all the little things, and he seems to do that. And it’s just very, very impressive that he can (still) play at such a high, high level.”
Horford first started paying close attention to James in the early 2000s, like any basketball fan at the time. When James joined the NBA in 2003, Horford was shocked a player fresh out of high school could make such a big impact immediately. Especially with the amount of scrutiny on James, one of the most highly anticipated prospects ever, Horford couldn’t believe how he always lived up to the hype.
“Not only lived up to it, but more,” Horford said. “When you have that type of — it’s responsibility, but there’s burden, there’s pressure, there’s a lot that comes with it. And for him to be able to navigate through all of that, it’s pretty remarkable.”
It only feels more remarkable to a player who competed against James at the height of his powers. Horford long ago learned the frustration so many Eastern Conference players encountered when trying to knock off one of James’ teams. From 2011-18, James reached the NBA Finals eight consecutive times. The conference featured some great teams during that time, including Derrick Rose’s Chicago Bulls, Paul George’s Indiana Pacers and Horford’s Atlanta Hawks. None of those teams ever advanced to the finals. Nobody could knock off James.
“It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it,” said Horford, “because there were really good teams in the East and he just happened to rise above everybody else with his teams year after year.”
LeBron James and Al Horford in Game 2 of the 2015 Eastern Conference finals. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Horford’s best chance with Atlanta to beat James in the playoffs came in the 2014-15 season. The Hawks won 19 straight games from December to January en route to a 60-win campaign. They earned home-court advantage as the top seed in the East but couldn’t take a single game off Cleveland. Kyle Korver’s broken foot in Game 2 only compounded the Hawks’ problems. The Cavaliers won four consecutive games in the series by an average of 13.3 points.
Two years later, Horford ran into James again with the Celtics. Boston dropped the first two games of the Eastern Conference finals before receiving the crushing news that Isaiah Thomas would miss the rest of the playoffs with a hip injury. After Boston captured Game 3 to cut its series deficit to 2-1, Horford, almost always composed, couldn’t contain his excitement as he told sideline reporter Abby Chin that “a lot of people doubted us out there and thought we were finished.”
After 10 straight playoff defeats to James, it was Horford’s first victory against him. The Celtics proceeded to lose the final two games of the series to fall 4-1. The following season, they tangled with the Cavaliers again in the Eastern Conference finals. This time, after trading Kyrie Irving to Boston, Cleveland no longer had a top-shelf roster. Though Irving and Gordon Hayward were both hurt for the Celtics, they won each of their first three home games to set up a Game 7 at TD Garden. James finished that game with 35 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists while playing all 48 minutes in a close Cleveland victory.
James was 33 at the time. Most players would not have much time left in the NBA after that age. He has put together the equivalent of another Hall of Fame career since then, with six more All-Star Games, six more All-NBA teams, one more championship and one more NBA Finals MVP. To Horford, who has aged far better than most, the production this deep into James’ career is astounding.
“The thing I always respected was his commitment to basketball,” Horford said. “… The thing I always saw with him was he always put his work on the court. To me, that was good perspective for me to understand, ‘Yeah, you can be very good and you can have other things going on, but basketball is what’s most important in this business. And that’s what you have to focus on first.’ Him working on his game, him continuing to grow as a basketball player is something that I’ve always seen from afar and respected.”
Those remarks from Horford hold weight. The big man’s teammates and coaches have expressed similar remarks about the way he has handled himself throughout his career.
“It’s everything,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “It’s the way he takes care of his body. It’s the mental approach. It’s his ability to stay even-keeled, not get too worked up. … He’s got a lot of wisdom. He’s great to be around. It’s impressive what he’s able to do over and over again.”
Horford was still a young player when he soaked in the finals 12 years ago. He was hoping to learn what a championship would require from him. At the time, James was already 10 seasons into his career. The odds were impossibly long back then that he and Horford would face off in 2025. Somehow, James is still going.
“It’s very admirable,” Horford said. “Physically and mentally, to be able to take that (burden) and consistently deliver, it’s something that I’m not sure if we’ll ever see anything like that again. It’s just that special.”
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; photos of LeBron James and Al Horford: Lauren Leigh Bacho, Juan Ocampo / Getty Images)
