Robert Horry: The Tall, Black David Eckstein

Remember the last time I tried to write something about the NBA Hall of Fame? Of course you don't, and I'm thankful for that fact. It was a disaster of Hindenbergesque proportions, specifically because I revealed the fact that I didn't know there is just one all-encompassing HOF for basketball (rather than an NBA one, an NCAA one, a Harlem Globetrotters one, etc.). You'd think that after that I would have learned my lesson to not write about this subject. And, as the cliche goes, you would have thought wrong. J.A. Adande, step up to the dummy podium.

There Will Never Be Another Player Quite Like Big Shot Rob

Thank you, headline writer, for picking the perfect combination of scientifically correct and sappily ridiculous.

OK, then, what is Robert Horry? The longer he plays, the harder it is to answer that question.

Is he the guy who hits all the clutch shots? Is he a cheap-shot artist? Does he belong in the Hall of Fame?

We'll address those soon enough (short answers: yes, no, yes),

The right answers are: sometimes, sometimes, and absolutely not.

but if you want the easiest way to describe Horry, consider this label: cowboy.

I'd be shocked if the easiest way to describe a guy who's done nothing but play basketball his entire life was to label him as someone with an entirely different profession. If you want the easiest way to describe Paul McCartney, consider this label: astronaut. Actually, no, consider this label: musician. See? Much better.

I never thought of him that way until he described his vision of retiring from the NBA: "I just want to leave like Shane. They don't know what happened to you. Just go."

So because Horry wants to retire like a fictional cowboy, whatever that means in the context of real-life professional sports, we're just going to call him a cowboy. Great.

Horry has traveled from town to town, Houston to Phoenix to L.A. to San Antonio, always quick on the draw with his trusty Colt .45 (well, except for in Phoenix, where the only thing he fired was a towel in the face of coach Danny Ainge).

This analogy is not working. Please discontinue it immediately.

He's kind of a loner. He's loved by his teammates, but he doesn't spend too much time with them away from the gym. You're more likely to find him hanging out with the strength and conditioning coach or even (gasp) reporters.

Thank you for discontinuing the analogy, and thank you as well for revealing why this puff piece is being written. Apparently Horry is reasonably media friendly. Has a little Ron Santo in him. So don't you think because of that quality, and because he's hit some memorable shots in big moments, we should put him in the Hall? No? Me either. Just checking.

There hasn't been a description that has stuck with Horry his entire career. He was a small forward who moved to power forward. He has started almost as many games as he has entered as a reserve.

Mostly because he's not that good of a player. Some interesting stats, courtesy of regular reader Erik. He has averaged more than 7 rebounds a game for a season once in his 16 year career. Once. That's nothing too strange, until you realize that Horry is 6'10". As in, taller than like 80% of the guys in the league. His career field goal percentage is .425. He's 6'10". This is unrelated to his height, but for good measure, also know that he has averaged double digits in points during the course of a season three whole times. In Erik's own words:

"Maybe I'd want him "setting screens" for me. Or taking a last second shot. But in the other 47 or so minutes, give me Erick goddamn Dampier. Just look at the career stats."

Dampier
Horry

"Rob's Sam Perkins with less talent and better teammates."

Ouch.

Thanks to Erik for doing my job for me. Is it possible he chose Dampier as a point of reference because they're both Erics who re-spell their first name like jerks? Probably.

Just know this: The NBA hasn't seen a winner like Horry in three decades.

In other words, the NBA hasn't seen a coattail rider like Horry... almost ever.

John Havlicek retired in 1978, the last member of the Boston Celtics' 1960s dynasty to check out, and one of only six players in NBA history with a championship ring collection larger than Horry's seven. Of those six players -- Bill Russell (11 rings), Sam Jones (10), Tom Heinsohn, K.C. Jones, Tom Sanders and Havlicek (eight each) -- Sanders is the only one not in the Hall of Fame. But the fact that K.C. Jones is makes the case for Horry.

Jones averaged 7.4 points, 3.5 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game in his nine-year career. Horry has averaged 7.0 points, 4.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game in 16 seasons.

Jones won an Olympic gold medal. Jones won two NBA titles as a coach. And Jones was well known as an excellent defender. None of these describe Horry. But sure, I think it's fair to say that their resumes are identical.

Jones also has the 9th lowest basketball-reference.com HOF likelihood score of anyone who's got in, at .349. (As I vaguely explained in that earlier post, it kind of sort of works like a percentage. Kind of. Very few guys with a score before .500 have been enshrined. Right around the .800 mark pretty much everyone gets in.) That's low, of course, but when you factor in the rings and the three things I named above, I can see the case for him. Horry has the rings... and... Want to know what Horry's HOF likelihood number is? Sure you do. It's .021. As in, more than three tenths of a point lower than Jones, whose own number is probably four tenths of a point or so below where most guys start getting strong consideration (Chris Webber, .697, Grant Hill, .683). Among active players, Horry is right in the neighborhood of Jerry Stackhouse (.022), Michael Finley (.025), and the always-dependable Jermaine O'Neal (.018). But hey, like the title says, there will never be another guy quite like Horry. So that's also working in his favor.

Jones proved there's a place in the Hall for underwhelming statistics if they came on winning teams.

And if the guy was an effective coach, Olympian, and defender. And even then, I really think we should question the notion that the rings establish an adequate body of work when it comes to a guy's playing ability.

With Horry, it's not just that he was around for all of those championships -- after all, the equipment manager for the Chicago Bulls has six rings. There's no way the 2002 Lakers or the 2005 Spurs would have earned their championships without Horry. And those are just the series he salvaged, the times he kept his team from the brink of elimination by draining the winning 3-pointers in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals and Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

Because we can say with 100% certainty that if Horry hadn't hit those shots for those teams, no one else on the roster would have. And the fact that both of those teams had two enormously talented players on the floor commanding attention from the opponents' defense at the time of the big shots should also not be considered. Hey, did you know David Eckstein hit three doubles during game 4 of the 2006 World Series? If he's not in the baseball HOF by next week, it's an injustice.

That doesn't include the times his shots gave his team an early series lead or eliminated an opponent.

Which, apparently, are either too numerous or too obvious for Adande to name here. I know they exist, but how about two sentences of recap? In this article that's supposed to be about why a player who's probably worse than Sam Perkins or Erick Dampier belongs in basketball's most hallowed shrine.

Maybe Horry didn't get his teams to that point,

Maybe backup quarterback Jared Lorenzen wasn't exactly the most important member of the 2007 New York Giants. Maybe the presidential primary race didn't totally go according to plan for Mitt Romney. Maybe gas prices are a little higher now than they were 10 years ago. (Current events joke! Want me to tie in something about the war in Iraq? No?)

but he brought them home. If relievers like Bruce Sutter and Rollie Fingers can get into the baseball Hall of Fame, and people believe kicker Adam Vinatieri deserves a bust in Canton, there's a place for Horry in the basketball Hall.

Worst. Cross-sport. Comparison(s). Ever. Absolute bottom of the barrel. I'll demonstrate my disgust with an analogy: a guy who's not that good at basketball but hits a few game winning shots is to Sutter/Fingers/Vinatieri as a cat is to... well, Sutter/Fingers/Vinatieri.

The playoffs are when Horry's gunslinger mentality pays off, when he's unafraid to draw and fire

I thought we agreed the cowboy thing wasn't working. Gunslinger might be a little better... a little.

even if he hasn't done a thing all game -- or all season.

And odds are, most of the time he made those huge shots, he hadn't done a damn thing all season.

There are two distinctive sounds in sports: Tiger Woods hitting a golf ball and Robert Horry taking a potential game-altering shot in a road playoff game.

Words cannot describe how awkward and wrong that is. Just like Shaq once called one of Craig Sager's suits "horri-awful," (sorry, couldn't find the clip on youtube, but some of you probably have seen it before) I'm deeming that statement "wronkward." First, why would you claim that there are two and only two distinctive sounds in the whole wide world of sports? And second, if you wanted to make that claim, why would you choose these two?

The first is a whack so hard you feel sorry for the ball's cover, followed by the sphere's tearing through the air like a fighter jet.

Peeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww! Whooooooooooooooooosh! Shhhhhhhhhhhhhurrrrfffffffffffff! Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like when dozens of professional golfers hit the ball.

The second is a terrified scream, the sound of 18,000 collectively saying "Oh s---! Not him!" as they realize Horry has been left open.

Although the magnitude of the reaction might vary from person to person, this is the exact reaction any home crowd has to any player on the visiting team being left open for a potential game-winning shot. Yes, even you, Ricky Davis.

Think about it: Has there been anyone you'd dread seeing in position to kill your team more than Horry?

There was a guy who played in Chicago for a while. More generally- I understand and fully acknowledge Horry's big-game pedigree but I think there are guys who shoot better than 34% from behind the arc for their careers (36% in the playoffs!) who would terrify me more. Because, you know, they're better shooters.

And I would like to add that I'm a crazy asshole who would love to have none other than Fish Fillet-Rod up to bat for my baseball team in a clutch situation. You know why? Because he's fucking awesome at baseball. That's right. I said it. Come and get some, ignorant commenters. Tell me about how dumb I am, and then go take a bath with a toaster.

It's his big shots in big moments that warrant Horry's mention among the game's greats.

Maybe in an NBATV feature or something, sure. But not in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

"You love the fact that it's said," Horry said. "At the end of the day, it's still going to be Kobe, LeBron and those type of guys, because they score a lot of points.

"People only remember your parting shot."

Or, if you're Kobe/LeBron/those type of guys, people remember that you were one of the best basketball players in the world for a long period of time.

And now that's become his problem. His two most recent YouTube moments are the hipcheck that sent Steve Nash flying into the scorer's table in last year's playoffs and his crosscheck into David West's already-ailing back in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals this year.

Go ahead- watch both of them. They're not, like, tackling-a-guy-on-a-breakaway dirty. But they're pretty dirty. The Nash one was probably worse. You can tell by the way Horry walked away with a tough guy expression on his face that he knew it was wrong. The West one was a little more legit, but certainly not clean. Now, is it the worst thing in the world for a basketball player to play a little dirty sometimes? Of course not. It's not some kind of epic travesty. But it's still wrong on some level, and only worse when the player in question reacts like this:

Horry doesn't lose sleep over either.

"Since it was the golden boy Steve Nash, it got carried on more than it should have," Horry said of the first incident.

It's true that the media loves Nash. But hey, dickass- you still hip checked and elbowed him. Hard. When all you had to do was slap his forearm. It was a dirty play. Don't act like you're some kind of victim.

And: "The David West thing was because of the Steve Nash thing."

In a way, yes. The fact that you did something vaguely similar a year earlier certainly played into peoples' perceptions of the incident. But again, the incident was pretty dirty. You cracked a guy in the back on a screen that was not executed legally. And what a funny coincidence that the guy who got cracked was known to have an injured back at the time! How convenient. Again- is this the end of the world? Do we need columnists talking about how the whole sport has gone to hell in a handbasket and the rules should be changed to prevent players from touching each other? Of course not. But don't be a bitch about it. You're dirty. You want your team to win. End of story.

In other words, once he became known as the guy in the black hat, it was easy to cast anything he did in a negative light.

Awwwwwwwwwwww! How sad! Someone call the whaaaaaambulance. You know, it's just so tough being Michael Jackson. For some strange reason, people just assume you're up to no good any time you hang out alone at your compound with a bus full of eight year old boys. Isn't it sad how people are so quick to judge? It's like they don't want to accept the idea that people can change.

The Nash play had nothing to do with basketball, just a flagrant foul by a frustrated player.

Well yes, it actually did have something to do with basketball. It happened on a basketball court during a basketball game. This is like saying that when a criminal shoots a bank teller in the course of a robbery, it had nothing to do with money.

The West play probably happens every night.

Not the way Horry did it, absolutely not.

"The film says it all," Horry said. "If he doesn't jump up, he runs into the screen.

I'll buy that West's jump exacerbated his pain. But Horry still leaned into him pretty hard. And was probably aware of West's back problems. That makes it dirty, even if it wasn't horribly illegal.

"You can't convince people of certain things. You let them think what they want to think. At the end of the day, in your mind and your heart, you know."

You know that you want to win, and will bend the rules to do so. Nothing wrong with that- just own up to it or stay quiet about it.

Do we know? Do we have enough to make up our minds about Horry?

Yes, like I already said: he's a big shot maker, a kind-of dirty player, and someone who should never ever ever ever ever be in the HOF.

He has appeared in more NBA playoff games than anyone else,

Take that, players whose careers ended before the playoffs consisted of four best-of-seven rounds! You're no Robert Horrys, that's for sure.

made more 3-pointers in the Finals than anyone else.

That's obviously a stat in his favor, but the fact that he only accumulated it after being dragged there by Hakeem/Shaq/Kobe/Duncan year after year is kind of a important factor in weighing its significance.

There's no official stat on big shots, but name someone whose list is longer.

Who was that Chicago guy again? Not that it's any shame to be second to him on a list, but I'm just saying.

Horry says it's a mistake to look only at those shots and ignore everything that came before them. For example, he says the 3-pointer he made that cut the Lakers' deficit from six points to three points with 1:40 remaining in Game 4 against the Sacramento Kings six years ago was just as important as the 3 at the buzzer that won that game.

"They always remember the last thing you do," Horry said. "They don't remember the things before."

Well, yeah, that makes sense when you stink most of the time and then hit a game winner. But guys who don't suck most of the time tend to be remembered for their entire body of work.

If Horry's latest is his last, it ain't pretty. Bothered by a left knee that had to be drained of excess fluid, he has yet to make a shot in the Western Conference finals, one of the reasons the Spurs trail the Lakers 2-1. His future is uncertain. He'll be a free agent in July and will turn 38 in August. He said he still has fun and wants to play two more years.

And I feel like little Joey in that I don't want to see Horry/Shane leave. Because when he's gone, you'll never see another player like him. The greatest winner of his era.

Ride those coattails, Big Shot Bob!

The last NBA cowboy.

Please stop.