Essay on the return according to Al Horford
Al Horford receives the ball and attacks the hoop with the latent threat of Giannis Antetokounmpo. He makes one step, two, and flies to provoke a scream that spreads from Puerto Plata to the world.
The Greek, the most important athlete on the planet, is sprawled on the floor. It is a blow to the jaw that dislocates those who play, those who watch, and that anticipates the knockout of what will come later.
It is, without a doubt, a memorable move, a leap taken from the manuals of another era, but at the same time it is an action that carries with it an evident symbolic charge: it is the world that is leaving telling the world of today that it still has things to say. The past clinging to the present to still be, the future stopped by a passionate outburst.
Horford unknowingly draws a tunnel in time that transports us: who said all is lost?
To return somewhere. To resurface. Back to the place where we were happy at least for a while. A spark of energy in which the old and the new converge, the players who were and are no longer, those who were before and are no longer. Horford delivers, then, much more than an unexpected acrobatic leap; it is a golden ticket to the land of the last things. To an instant that seemed to be extinguished, to a basketball that is missed every day but that nevertheless is there, just one play away, to embrace it and feel it again to the fullest.
This is the story of a magical comeback. The Phoenix rising from the ashes to dominate the stage once again. From a talent abandoned by the majority to a fundamental piece in the Conference Semifinals. The chest that opens to return the object that made us live like never before. The lost prince who knocks on the door to be reunited with his beloved. Here I am again, these are my rules and this is how it will be played tonight. The teaching, the lesson, is then laid bare: never let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do. Don’t let anyone dare to tell you whether or not you are capable of doing anything on this earth.
Horford is much more than his 30 points and eight rebounds in the Celtics’ playoff-tying win. He is symbolic of an idea that drives action. The perfect example that things aren’t over until they’re over. That as long as there is time on the clock there will always be chances to turn the story. Basketball, in this, distances itself from any sport.
“I didn’t quite catch what he said, but the way he looked at me didn’t sit well with me. And that got me going,” Horford said of the Giannis dunk that resulted in a technical foul and put Boston back in the game. The action that sparks the reaction. The extinguished volcano and the combustion that awakens the eruption. Antetokounmpo’s provocative action yesterday, Sam Presti’s oblivion of the Oklahoma City Thunder some time ago. All it takes is one motivation to rekindle the flame.
Horford, flagship of an analog basketball that transits the epilogue, advances against everything and everyone. Representative of an era that fights daily against detachment, impatience and liquid relationships, his return is much more than a comeback: only those who throw in the towel too early grow old.
Falling is the first step to getting up. Not so fast, dear friends.
I haven’t heard the bell yet.
