NBA Finals 2024: Florida Gators legend Al Horford wins championship with Boston Celtics

Basketball

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Image Credit: Boston Celtics

One of the greatest basketball players in Florida Gators history finally has some NBA hardware to match his two national championships. Al Horford, in his 17 season as a professional, won the NBA Finals alongside the Boston Celtics, which beat the Dallas Mavericks in five games.

Horford, 38, is now the third former Florida player and 48th player in history to win an NCAA title and NBA championship. To that end, he joins Corey Brewer, his teammate on the 2006-07 back-to-back champion Gators who won the NBA title in 2011 with the Mavericks, and Marreese Speights, who was a reserve on the 2007 team and won an NBA crown in 2015 with the Golden State Warriors.

He is the 10th former Florida to play to win an NBA title overall joining Brewer, Speights, Vernon Maxwell (Houston Rockets — 1994-95), Udonis Haslem (Miami Heat — 2006, 2012-13), Jason Williams (Heat — 2006), Matt Bonner (San Antonio Spurs — 2007, 2014), Mike Miller (Heat — 2012-13), David Lee (Warriors — 2015) and Chris Chiozza (Warriors — 2022).

Horford played in 186 career playoff games before winning the NBA title, the most in league history. He was understandably emotional during the trophy ceremony.

“It’s been long, a lot of hard work,” he said. “… I still can’t believe it. We did it. We’re here. This is just how I pictured it here at the [TD] Garden with our fans, everyone together. This is how I saw it eight years ago.”

Though Horford was a reserve player half of the season — for the first time in his career — he actually started Game 1 of the NBA Finals becoming the third Gators player to do so who previously started a national title game (Miller, Haslem).

Horford averaged 8.6 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 1.0 blocks per game during the regular season, shooting 51.1% from the field, 41.9% from 3-point range and a career-best 86.7% from the free-throw line.

He became an even more integral player during the postseason averaging 9.2 points and 6.9 rebounds with two notable breakout performances: a 22-point, 15-rebound series-clinching performance against the Cleveland Cavaliers in which he made six triples and a 23-point breakout against the Indiana Pacers in which he made a career-high seven triples.

With 17 seasons accrued, Horford (along with Miller) is the second-longest tenured NBA player in Florida history behind Haslem, who retired last year after his 20th NBA season.