Asked if he felt like he was off to a slow start following an underwhelming seven-point effort in his team’s disappointing Game 2 loss to the Chicago Bulls, Boston Celtics big man Al Horford began, “I mean, I don’t,” and then paused a moment to gather his thoughts before answering.

“I think the way we try to play — at least I try to play — is what the defense gives,” Boston’s $113 million free-agent signing added. “For those who really understand the game, a lot of the times they were already really packing the paint, making us find shooters and things like that.”

In that pause was the entire Al Horford experience on the Celtics. It seemed as though even Horford understood he could — and should — be doing more to prevent his top-seeded team from being embarrassed at home by the Bulls. At the same time, when you really watch the film, as cliche as it sounds, he is more often than not reading what the defense gives him, making the smart play and, yes, doing all the little things the Celtics brought him to Boston to do.

[Follow Ball Don’t Lie on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Tumblr]

But Boston sports radio callers don’t want to hear cliches when they’re looking at seven points in a box score. They’re too busy shouting “AL HORFORD MAKES MORE IN A YEAR THAN LARRY BIRD DID IN HIS CAREER!” They want an easy answer as to why the C’s are paying max money to a fringe All-Star. Heck, even when Horford posted a near triple-double in a Game 1 loss, the city’s sports radio hosts couldn’t help but measure him against his max contract.

Where's Al Horford? — Scott Zolak (@scottzolak) April 17, 2017





Horford is tied with several others as the NBA’s second-highest player this season behind LeBron James, making $26.5 million and in line for seven percent raises each of the next three years. If you’re going to use that as the measuring stick for his value, then there’s no way he can live up to your standard. He is not the second-best player in the league, never has been.

But that’s just not how the payment structure works. Sure, if every player were a free agent each summer, the list of highest-paid players would always reflect the All-NBA rosters. Instead, Kevin Durant, Horford, Dwyane Wade and Dwight Howard were the four biggest names to change teams in free agency this past summer, and all four are now among the league’s 13 highest-paid players. It’s the price you pay to lure a current or former All-Star away from his incumbent team.

The demand for big men was and usually is high, as evidenced by the combined $272 million thrown at Joakim Noah, Bismack Biyombo, Timofey Mozgov and Ian Mahinmi in 2016. If you’d rather be paying any of those guys $17-18 million than Horford $26.5 million, by all means. If the C’s wanted a high-caliber big man in July, they were going to have to pay handsomely for him.

Fans don’t want to hear that, either. The Celtics promised “fireworks” for years, and the Horford signing was presented as such by the organization. They added the second-most coveted free agent, beating out the Atlanta Hawks and Houston Rockets to land Horford, and were then reportedly a finalist in the Durant sweepstakes. It was a necessary step toward legitimacy.

In reality, the Celtics upgraded at a position they were in desperate need to fill, and they did so with a past-his-prime 30-year-old four-time All-Star who averaged 15.4 points, 9.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.3 blocks per 36 minutes over nine years in Atlanta. Boston saw similar production per 36 minutes from Horford this season (15.6 points, 7.6 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 1.4 blocks).

But you can’t really market your $113 million signing with an advertising slogan like, “Hey, he’s the best we could get!” So, instead we heard how Horford impacts the game beyond the box score. Among centers last season, he was one of the league’s most efficient 3-point shooters and pick-and-roll men offensively, and he was the anchor of the East’s best defense in 2015-16.

The guy could do it all, they said. So, when the team wins 53 games and earns the conference’s No. 1 seed in the playoffs, it’s hard to argue against anyone who says, “He just makes you better,” even as Horford submitted the worst rebounding rate (11.8 percent) of his career, his lowest true shooting percentage since his rookie year, a lower win score per 48 minutes than all but his first two seasons, and a worse on/off rating than fellow starting big man Amir Johnson.

Story continues