Robert Horry's Most Memorable Shot

Robert Horry isn’t the best player on his team. He never has been. But he didn’t win 7 NBA titles by accident. Horry is one of the great clutch players to ever live. When he retires, ESPN will run a highlight of all his game winning three-pointers, and there are enough “Horry for the win…Got it!” clips to fill three or four minutes of air time. Horry probably won’t retire this year, but say he did, which shot would go down as his most legendary? Was it his game winner in the closing seconds of the 1995 Finals? Was it his Game 3 corner long-ball with a second left to give the Lakers a 3-0 series lead over Portland? Or was it the infamous tip-out three at the buzzer against Sacramento in Game 4? If Horry didn’t make that shot, the Lakers’25-point comeback would have fallen short and they would have gone down 3-1 in the series, so that surely has to be it, right? Not quite.

Horry’s biggest shot came this year, in Game 4 of the Western Conference Semis vs. the Suns. It wasn’t a three-pointer, it didn’t splash the net, and the crowd didn’t even cheer after he did it. This shot was one that sent Steve Nash flying into the scorer’s table, and prompted Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw to get up off the bench in an effort to defend their MVP. When Horry connected on this “shot,” the game was all but over and Phoenix had just tied it up 2-2 going back home for Game 5. The Suns would soon find out that they would be without Stoudemire and Diaw for this decisive game.

Kurt Thomas did an admirable job filling in, scoring 15 points and grabbing 12 rebounds, but Phoenix fell short and lost the game 88-85. Had Stoudemire (and Diaw doesn’t hurt either) played in that game, Phoenix would have been in great position to go up 3-2 and would have been in the drivers seat for not only that series, but the entire playoffs. Once David Stern handed down the suspensions, it was clear that the Suns were too undermanned inside to compete inside. After Stern made the worst decision of his tenure, he should have cancelled the rest of the playoffs and awarded San Antonio with the Larry O’Brien Trophy right then and there.

I said it after the suspensions were announced and I’ll say it again, the series between Phoenix and San Antonio was the real NBA Finals. Everything after that (except for LeBron’s heroics against the Pistons) was simply a waste of time for players and fans.

I can’t be too bitter about this, though. I respect the Spurs. They are a great team with a great attitude. They play the game unselfishly, they play the right way, and though it’s not pretty, they just continue to win.

I can’t say enough about how good Tim Duncan is. He will probably go down as one of the top ten players to ever play basketball. I love Tony Parker as a player and respect his game both on and off the court (he’s gotta have game to get Eva), but Parker did not deserve to win MVP of the series. This year, the award should have been split between two very important people in the San Antonio organization. Firstly, David Stern should have awarded the trophy to himself for playing such an instrumental, yet unexpected role in the Spurs’ fourth title run. After Stern took off his NBA Champions T-Shirt and finished interviewing himself, he should have returned to his role as an unbiased commissioner and handed the trophy to Horry, for cheap-shotting the best player on the floor in an effort to hurt him or at the very least cause a fight that would draw some suspensions. Horry’s abuse of the NBA’s unnecessary rules came up huge for San Antonio, and it turns out that his forearm shiver to Nash was indeed the most vital shot of his illustrious career.