Al Horford has been booty this year. Guerschon Yabusele has been booty also, but in a different way, if you catch my drift (heh heh heh). But yeah, Horford, he was an All-Star last year but this year looks a million steps slow even if his stats are about the same (which is only because he finally had some good games recently). Is he expendable? Looking at this game from Daniel Theis, where he does everything that Horford does, I’d say, yeah. Trade him back to the Hawks for John Collins. I’d bet they’d do that.
Theis got the start tonight because Horford is breaking down and needs to rest every other game these days, and he made the absolute most of it. Granted, the Bulls weren’t doing much to try and stop him, but he still went out there and did it, and no amount of rationalization will change the fact that he scored a career high 22 points tonight, dished 5 dimes, and blocked 4 shots. Those are the facts of what happened tonight; the circumstances are irrelevant.
He got a little bit of extra time at the end of this blowout when Yabusele went out with an injury (just saying “an injury” does not really convey how gnarly this one looked), so he maybe had slightly inflated stats because the Bulls were REALLY way past caring at that point. Here I go, rationalizing again. Remember: 22 points. That’s all the matters.