The Fantasy Basketball Encyclopedia

Player Dossier · Golden State Warriors

Al Horford

Al Horford is a 40-year-old specialist and Porziņģis handcuff whose threes, blocks, and low turnovers remain useful only when the schedule or injuries open center minutes.

Team: Golden State Warriors · Age: 40 · Position: PF/C · Status: re-signed · As of: 2026-07-18

2026-27 median projection

GP MPG FG% FT% 3PM PTS REB AST STL BLK TO
50 18.0 .440 .820 1.2 6.7 4.4 2.0 0.6 0.8 0.8

Nine-cat: top-130 to top-180 per game, better in punt-points. Points: C-. Dynasty: 2.5/10. Opening-night allocation: 18 minutes.

Role and evidence

Horford re-signed July 6. In 2025-26 he averaged 8.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.1 blocks, 0.7 steals, and 1.6 threes in 21.5 minutes over 45 games (ESPN).

His minutes should be complementary rather than cumulative with Porziņģis: 18 in the representative rotation, but 24-28 on Porziņģis rest nights. At this age, back-to-backs and long travel stretches matter more than nominal depth-chart position. Horford can also close at center when his positional defense is preferred to Bassey's rim-running.

Low turnovers and out-of-position threes/blocks make him more valuable in nine-cat than points leagues. Low scoring, low free-throw volume, and modest rebounding prevent a stable standard-league floor.

Range

Career record

Pre-NBA: Florida, three seasons (2004-05 through 2006-07), winning back-to-back NCAA championships in 2006 and 2007. He was a role player as a freshman (5.6 points, 6.5 rebounds, 1.6 blocks in 22.8 minutes on .480), then a two-year efficiency monster: 11.3 points and 7.6 rebounds on .608 in 2005-06, then 13.2 points, 9.5 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 1.8 blocks on .608 in 2006-07. Second-team NABC and third-team AP All-American, first-team All-SEC and SEC Tournament MVP in 2007. He attempted no meaningful college threes and shot .582/.611/.644 from the line across the three years — both the three-point shot and the free-throw stroke are entirely NBA-era construction. Draft: 2007, first round, 3rd overall, Atlanta Hawks.

Season Age Team GP MPG PTS REB AST STL BLK 3PM FG% FT% TO
2007-08 21 ATL 81 31.4 10.1 9.7 1.5 0.7 0.9 0.0 .498 .731 1.7
2008-09 22 ATL 67 33.5 11.5 9.3 2.4 0.8 1.4 0.0 .525 .727 1.5
2009-10 23 ATL 81 35.1 14.2 9.9 2.3 0.7 1.1 0.0 .551 .789 1.5
2010-11 24 ATL 77 35.1 15.3 9.3 3.5 0.8 1.0 0.0 .557 .798 1.5
2011-12 25 ATL 11 31.6 12.4 7.0 2.2 0.9 1.3 0.0 .553 .733 1.5
2012-13 26 ATL 74 37.2 17.4 10.2 3.2 1.1 1.1 0.0 .543 .644 2.0
2013-14 27 ATL 29 33.0 18.6 8.4 2.6 0.9 1.5 0.1 .567 .682 2.2
2014-15 28 ATL 76 30.5 15.2 7.2 3.2 0.9 1.3 0.1 .538 .759 1.3
2015-16 29 ATL 82 32.1 15.2 7.3 3.2 0.8 1.5 1.1 .505 .798 1.3
2016-17 30 BOS 68 32.3 14.0 6.8 5.0 0.8 1.3 1.3 .473 .800 1.7
2017-18 31 BOS 72 31.6 12.9 7.4 4.7 0.6 1.1 1.3 .489 .783 1.8
2018-19 32 BOS 68 29.0 13.6 6.7 4.2 0.9 1.3 1.1 .535 .821 1.5
2019-20 33 PHI 67 30.2 11.9 6.8 4.0 0.8 0.9 1.5 .450 .763 1.2
2020-21 34 OKC 28 27.9 14.2 6.7 3.4 0.9 0.9 2.0 .450 .818 1.0
2021-22 35 BOS 69 29.1 10.2 7.7 3.4 0.7 1.3 1.3 .467 .842 0.9
2022-23 36 BOS 63 30.5 9.8 6.2 3.0 0.5 1.0 2.3 .476 .714 0.6
2023-24 37 BOS 65 26.8 8.6 6.4 2.6 0.6 1.0 1.7 .511 .867 0.7
2024-25 38 BOS 60 27.7 9.0 6.2 2.1 0.6 0.9 1.9 .423 .895 0.8
2025-26 39 GSW 45 21.5 8.3 4.9 2.6 0.7 1.1 1.6 .426 .846 0.9
Career 1183 31.2 12.7 7.7 3.2 0.8 1.1 0.9 .507 .764 1.4

Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category ranks are not verifiable from the sources available here, so no year-by-year finish is asserted. The record shows three eras. Through 2015-16 he was a conventional top-40-to-top-60 category big: near-10 rebounds, .54-plus field-goal percentage and real scoring, with no threes. From 2015-16 through roughly 2019-20 he was arguably at his fantasy peak in shape terms, adding 1.1-1.5 threes and, in Boston, a 4-to-5 assist role from center that is genuinely rare and made him a top-50-type asset even as the scoring fell. Since 2021-22 he has been a specialist: threes, blocks, an excellent free-throw percentage on tiny volume, and near-elite turnover economy (0.6-0.9 per game) against declining rebounds and scoring. That last profile is worth far more in nine-cat than in points leagues, where 8-to-10 points and six rebounds score close to nothing and the low turnover count is not rewarded at all.

Durability: 81, 67, 81, 77, 11, 74, 29, 76, 82, 68, 72, 68, 67, 28, 69, 63, 65, 60, 45. Two catastrophic seasons and one administrative one explain most of the gaps. He tore his left pectoral on January 11, 2012 (surgery, three-to-four-month prognosis) and completely tore his right pectoral on December 26, 2013 (season-ending surgery). The 28 games in 2020-21 were not injury: Oklahoma City announced on March 27, 2021 that he would sit the remainder of the season so the club could develop younger players. The 2025-26 season was the first genuine age-management year — Kerr stated before the season that Horford would not play both ends of any back-to-back, and Golden State had 16 of them, guaranteeing at least eight absences before any injury. On top of that he missed 10 of 11 games around December with sciatic irritation and 14 straight from March 15 to April 9 with a right calf strain, finishing with 45 games and only 13 starts. The scheduled-rest floor alone now caps him near 70 games in a best case.

Trajectory: The defining career move was learning to shoot threes at 29 — he attempted essentially none through eight NBA seasons and three college seasons, then went from 1.1 makes in 2015-16 to a peak of 2.3 in 2022-23, which is what let a post-oriented center age into a floor-spacing five and play until 40. The second inflection was Boston's 2016-19 offense handing him a hub role worth four to five assists a night from center. What is now unambiguously gone is the interior game: rebounds fell from 9-plus in Atlanta to 6.2-6.4 in late Boston to 4.9 last season, and field-goal percentage has been .423 and .426 the last two years after a career .507 — that is a two-season pattern, not noise, and it means the shooting is no longer efficient enough to carry the profile. Blocks at 1.1 and per-36 rebounding around 8.2 say the per-minute defensive value has held up better than the raw line suggests, so the decline is partly a minutes story. But at 40, on a team that has already committed publicly to sitting him for scheduling reasons, the projection question is not what his rates will be — it is whether he plays 50 games, and every piece of evidence from 2025-26 argues the answer trends down rather than up.

Career sources: ESPN career stats · StatMuse recent seasons · Wikipedia (Florida stats, championships, draft, pectoral injuries, OKC shutdown) · SI on the Warriors' back-to-back load-management plan

Open questions