Al Horford is healed and excited to be back on the floor after missing the biggest part of last season with a torn pectoral muscle. Horford talked about his recovery and how he wanted to return earlier last season but just couldn't quite get there.
On last season, Horford shares the same feeling that a lot of fans do. What would have happened had he and Zaza Pachulia been healthy for the playoffs last season:
"That's always going to remain the mystery," Horford said. "We didn't quite know if we maybe if I was healthy, if Zaza was healthy what would have happened. I think [Ferry] based his decision on our previous playoff history. I think that last year was the year for us if we would have been healthy. I think we would have definitely broke through that barrier."
Ferry's decision was to break up the core that had made five consecutive trips to the playoffs but also felt like it had reached its ceiling.
Now Horford sees a team that has plenty of new faces on it but sees it as a talented group who just quickly needs to gel coming out of training camp.
"I know we have a lot of work to do," Horford said. "We have so many new players. We don't know how long it's going to take to gel. Hopefully it's going to take just the month of October, maybe some of November, for us to start figuring it out."