After her brother Al left the Celtics, Anna Horford has held onto her Boston fandom — when Al’s not playing them, anyway.
It’s already going to be awkward enough seeing former Boston Celtics big man Al Horford as a Philadelphia 76er in the 2020 NBA Playoffs for Celtics fans who look back fondly on his time with the team before this summer’s implosion.
But for his younger sister Anna Horford, it’s especially awkward.
Celtics fans truly embraced the entire Horford family when he joined the team in 2016, and Anna in particular.
After the debacle that was the 2018-19 season, few blamed Horford for decamping a situation that was, at the time, in free fall and only looking worse by the minute.
And through it all, Anna stayed connected with the Celtics, rooting for the team whenever they weren’t playing against her brother.
But now, facing his old team on the come-up once again, the meeting of Philadelphia and Boston has put Al in the position of trying to crush the young wing duo of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum he spent many a practice building up, and Anna in one that has her having to root against the Celtics.
“I feel very conflicted,” she explained on the most recent edition of the “Celtics Lab” podcast.
“There’s that sense of wanting to support my family and my brother and his team, but also, they happen to be playing one of my favorite teams that I still love very, very much. And so kind of feels like we’re part of the Celtics family in a way, me and my siblings at least — so yeah, it’s it’s very conflicting.”
That bond between Boston’s youth movement and her brother in particular will make it an unusual meeting.
The postseason series is the third such series between the two in as many years — though Horford’s first with the 76ers.
“I think the young guys especially Jaylen, and Jason have really looked up to Al as a role model. And Al is definitely — I’ve said this in so many interviews — was the dad of the team. He’d always give them advice and I think they really respected that because a lot of guys, veteran players can sometimes brush off the young guys.”
Al was very hands on with trying to teach them what he knew and how to stay in the league for a long time, how to be successful ,how to be a good teammate,” Anna added. “I think that they had a really solid relationship.”
Anna related how the Philadelphia fans have been something of a mixed bag for her and her brother both as well.
Like in Boston, there have always been the superficial fans who only read stat lines and contract amounts, and think there has to be a very obvious relationship to both.
But unlike Celtics fans, some 76ers supporters don’t seem to get the fit issues that have given Philly problems all season are not Horford’s fault — and those sorts and the type who believes you can only like one team at a time have been giving Anna flak for her ongoing ties to Boston.
“I don’t really have the strongest relationship, I suppose, with Philly fans,” she explained.
“I think they’re really, really put off by the the fact that I don’t publicly criticize Boston and that I still like to see everyone thrive on that team. I still am liking tweets about how well the guys are doing and stuff but you can’t really blame me for that –I know them. It was three amazing seasons; the city really embraced our family, so I think that they do take that the wrong way and they would like to see me drop the Celtics completely.”
“But I’m not going to do that just because a bunch of people I don’t know want me to!” she exclaimed. “I still go there like since Al was playing — I’ve been there a couple times, and I still love the city.”
“I still love the people, I still love the fans and they say the best things to us … like for this series, I saw someone tweet, ‘Winner of the series gets to keep the Horfords [That was] a Boston fan tweeting, and … we’re like, ‘Oh my god, we love you guys so much.”
As to how the first-round series will go, well — let’s just say that’s a riskier topic for anyone who doesn’t want to have to spend the week muting accounts from both fanb bases.
But Anna did venture a few opinions on the matchup:
“I think it’s going to be a very challenging series for Philly — I will say that,” she began.
“I’m not saying that it’s going to be a sweep or they’re not going to step up. But I do think it’s going to be quite challenging, especially without Ben. He’s a major facilitator, and he’s really essential to their process. So, I think it’s going to be tough.”
I don’t even want to say how many games I think it’s going to be,” she hedged, “but it’s going to be an entertaining series at least, and social media will be very entertaining throughout the series as well.
If my Twitter goes dark, you guys know why,” Anna said jokingly — at least we think it was in jest. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to restrain myself, so we’ll see what happens.”
“I hope that both teams do well …that and that Al does well, and that it’s a good, entertaining series,” Anna emphasized.
Based on their last two postseason meetings, we’d say the odds are pretty good for that outcome, at least.
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