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Stevens Impressed by Horford's Track Record

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When the Boston Celtics sought out free agent Al Horford during this past summer, they were interested in much more than his four All-Star appearances and the impressive statistics he has accumulated during his nine-year NBA career.

What truly intrigued Boston’s front office brass was the 30-year-old big man’s team-first attitude and the winning résumé that backs it up.

Coach Brad Stevens talked at length about Horford’s striking track record Wednesday afternoon during the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation’s annual “Teeing Up for Kids” golf tournament in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and how he hopes that it will rub off on his young cast of players.

“He’s just won at such a high level for his whole career and that’s what he’s driven by,” said Stevens. “When you’ve got a guy that’s as accomplished as him – both from a winning standpoint and from an individual accolade standpoint – and you have a relatively young team around him, I think that’s a good example to set.”

Horford’s former team, the Atlanta Hawks, can surely attest to the example he set during his nine seasons with the team. The Hawks had experienced an eight-year playoff drought before they drafted the two-time NCAA champion in 2007. Once he arrived, they never missed the playoffs again, as he led them to nine straight postseason berths.

Boston could sure use a guy like that as they look to break past the first round of the playoffs for the first time in five seasons.

The 2015-16 version of the Celtics was loaded with players that had team-first, winning mentalities, but what it lacked was a veteran with a consistently successful resume. It lacked a guy like Horford, who knows the path to the postseason as well as you know your way home from work or from school.

To put things into perspective, Avery Bradley had the most playoff experience with 605 postseason minutes prior to Horford’s arrival. Horford has amassed 2,560 such minutes, which is just 382 minutes fewer than the rest of the Celtics roster combined.

That experience has produced a leader out of Horford, and that’s what the Celtics are hoping he will be for their youthful squad.

“I think that’s why we went after him,” said Stevens. “And we’re not asking anybody who comes in to be outside of their personality; just be yourself to the best of your ability.

“I think his authenticity is one of the things that attracts people to him. He carries himself in a way that screams, ‘I’m here, I’m about the team and it’s about winning.’ We ask that out of all of our guys and hopefully that has a catalytic effect on our team.”

One of Horford’s greatest impacts should come on the defensive end, where he has established himself as one of the most versatile bigs in the game.

“It gives you a little more flexibility,” said Stevens. “He’s another guy that can guard the 4 and the 5. He can fly around and full-rotate. He can switch. He can do some of the things that you have to do inevitably.

“There are things that you prepare for in a scheme or in a system that ultimately work for awhile, but then your basketball intuition has to take over and you have to be playing with multiple efforts to make sure you are where you need to be. And he does all that stuff really well and he understands the game.”

As well as Horford understands the game, even he will have some growing to do during the early part of this season as he adjusts to a new system. Stevens, however, noted that it should help that there are a number of players who have now been in his system for a couple of years and should be able to speed up Horford’s adjustment phase.

“I hope that that expedites the process for him,” said Stevens. “Inevitably there’s an adjustment period, for who knows how long. But we’ve got a number of guys back and we have some guys that could make a pretty significant impact on our team that are new, too. So we’ll see how long it takes.”

The adjustment process will begin next week, when Horford and the Celtics hit the court in Waltham, Massachusetts to tip off training camp. It won’t just be a learning period for him though; it will also be a time for the veteran to teach.

Horford has the most impressive winning resume on the Celtics, and it needs to rub off on his new teammates as they look to improve upon last season’s success.