Charlotte Hornets: Why an Al Horford trade makes perfect sense

As it turned out, the 76ers were an awful fit for Horford for various reasons. Horford’s bread and butter comes out of the high post, and pick and roll. Next to Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, the Sixers’ lack of spacing forced Horford out of the paint, and behind the 3 point arc. 32% of Horford’s minutes came at power forward, the 3rd highest mark in his career.

Furthermore, even playing C he would occasionally need to spot up beyond the 3 point arc in order to optimize Ben Simmons. The Sixers ran the 29th most Pick and Roll of any NBA team, and when they did they often used Ben Simmons as the roll man to maximize his roll threat whilst minimizing the impact of his inability to shoot. The Sixers’ overall spacing was horrific, with the best shooter in their starting lineup being Tobias Harris at 36.7% until Brett Brown pulled the plug on the Horford starter experiment, and moved Shake Milton into the starting lineup.

This will change on the Charlotte Hornets. The Hornets are a pick-and-roll based team, with Devonte’ Graham an absolute wizard at finding crevices in the defense and hitting his roll man with a pocket pass. Furthermore, the Hornets don’t have any non-shooters in its rotation, though Cody Martin and Malik Monk could stand to work on their jump-shots. Most of all, Horford will be playing the center position on the Hornets.

Anyway, Horford’s play in the Orlando bubble was much better prior to the Celtics series. The time off allowed Horford to recover from niggling injuries, and his numbers in the bubble were a clear improvement in his regular-season statistics.

This does mean it may be shrewd for the Charlotte Hornets to give Horford a minutes restriction and load manage him in order to preserve his health, especially in next season’s crammed schedule.

That said, the Hornets may be in a position to accommodate this. The Hornets currently have Cody Zeller on their roster, another quality center also has own injury issues, and may do best with minutes restrictions and load management policies. On nights where Horford needs rest, Cody could play starter minutes, and vice-versa.

Overall,  Sixers lineups with Horford at the 4 ended the season at a net rating of -1.4 per 100 possessions across 726 minutes, whereas they rated a +5.2 per 100 possessions with Horford at the 5, in 1428 minutes. Clearly, playing Horford at the 5 is still effective in the modern NBA, but unfortunately, the Sixers weren’t in a position to fully take advantage of this given their best player, Joel Embiid, also occupies the center position.