Sixers

Al Horford’s “Some Stuff Going On” Quote is Being Overblown

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Feb 6th, 2020 · 10:27 AM EST

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At Sixers practice on Wednesday, Howard Eskin asked Al Horford if anybody on the team needed to be called out to address the poor play of a sixth place squad, which just lost three straight games for the fourth time this season.

Here’s the entire exchange, for context:

Howard: “Does anybody need to stand up and call somebody out?”

Horford: “Yeah I mean, you know, there’s some stuff going on in our locker room, and we’ll keep that internal. But we all know we need to be better, we need to step it up, and it’s a great opportunity to do it tomorrow (Thursday).”

A number of individual media members and outlets immediately ran with the “some stuff going on in our locker room” portion of the quote, which was truncated and shared on Twitter and/or inserted into national headlines, like this:

A number of people interpreted this quote to mean that the Sixers have locker room issues, which is not how I understood it. To me, Horford was answering Eskin’s question by essentially saying that players understand the problems, that they’re having discussions with one another and addressing concerns about the poor play in a candid and honest way.

Think about it –

Do you really believe that a guy like Al Horford, a 33-year-old veteran and intelligent guy, would admit to the media that his team has problems, and then turn around in the next breath and say, “we’ll keep that internal”?

It makes no sense at all. You’re either keeping it internal or you’re not, so using context clues there, one can assume that he was simply saying that the team is being open with one another about their issues, and that the nature of those discussions will remain private. I think using the word “stuff” really resulted in a lot of damaging ambiguity there.

Here’s something else to consider:

This same thing happened one month ago, a similar situation when the Sixers lost three straight road games, then had two days off, came home, and practiced. Josh Richardson dropped the famous “accountability” quote after the Indiana loss, and we asked Brett Brown and every player about it the following Thursday, before they flew out to Houston.

Here’s what Horford said at the time:

Q: Your thoughts on accountability?

“I just think that (Josh Richardson) was definitely frustrated with the way the game went. But today we took a step forward and had a really good practice. I was really encouraged by it. What he said was a message well-received, but I think it obviously had to do with having a rough game the last game.”

Q: What is player-to-player accountability? You’ve been in the league for a long time.

“Just talking. Just talking to one another. I think we’re all new with one another. Where’s the line where you call a player out when he needs to be called out? Things like that. Usually that happens on the defensive end. It can be on the offensive end, but mostly on the defensive end. That’s what he was referring to and he made a good point.”

Q: Is the ecosystem of this locker room unique in the fact that the older guys are new to the program, while Ben and Joel have been here a while but are only 23 and 25 years old? Does that change the dynamic of how things work?

“It is different. It’s different in that way. As we go along I’m finding my way and understanding how I can help the group, and where I can come in and have a positive impact. That’s all part of the regular season.”

That’s very similar to everything you heard coming from players yesterday. They’ve been down this road before, and they told us after the Indy loss that they had a good team meeting the morning before the Thursday practice that preceded the Texas flight.

Check out the Horford quote again, this time with the full video for more context:

Here's the full Al Horford quote that everybody is taking the wrong way: pic.twitter.com/e946sXg3iL

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) February 5, 2020

In my mind, “some stuff going on” means “we’re having those discussions.” That’s how I interpreted it. Then he’s basically saying, “those are private conversations that we wouldn’t share with the media.” His delivery and body language has been consistent throughout the season, so I didn’t really bat an eye when he dropped that quote.

And the Joel Embiid quotes from yesterday were similarly overblown. He’s talked many times about the spacing issues the Sixers have. He’s used the term “sacrifice” and spoke at-length about being double teamed. He even said straight up that he’d like Ben Simmons to shoot more. You also saw that in his body language way back in the preseason, when he was basically begging Ben to take that three pointer against the Guangzhou Loong Lions. While his Wednesday quotes were telling, they weren’t necessarily new. He’s talked about all of those things before. I think people responded with more alarm yesterday simply because the team is currently playing shitty basketball, but Embiid has been saying stuff like this for a long time now, even when the Sixers were winning.

Anyway, hopefully that adds some clarity. I don’t think Al Horford would ever come out and say “yes we have locker room problems, but we’ll keep that private.” It’s contradictory and out of character. I think the word “stuff” was probably the wrong choice in the moment, which is why people took the quote the way they did.

More than anything, they can help themselves immensely by going out and beating Milwaukee tonight.