One of only three teams in the Eastern Conference over .500 is now without its star player for a significant amount of time.
The Atlanta Hawks confirmed that Al Horford completely tore his right pectoral muscle on the play above, a simple defensive effort trying to deny an inbounds pass during the overtime of the Hawks/Cavs game Thursday. Ken Berger of CBSSports.com first reported this was potentially the case.
Horford was clearly in a lot of pain when the injury happened and it didn’t look like a minor tweak. Berger reminds us Horford has been down this road before.
Horford has been playing the best ball of his career this season, leading the Hawks averaging 18.6 points a game on 56.7 percent of his shots (he has a true shooting percentage of 58.8 percent) and pulling down 8.4 rebounds a game. He has paired well with Paul Millsap up front in an undersized but strong front line.
With Horford out for a while, the Hawks will lean on Elton Brand and Pero Antic — but that is a steep drop off in talent, particularly at the offensive end, which may have them looking to make a trade.
What have we done to anger the basketball gods to have this rash of injuries to elite players this season?
