Has there been a more specialized player in basketball history than Robert Horry? All he does is hit shots, usually three-pointers, to win games in late May and throughout June. That's it. That's his job. Nobody has ever done it better, either. He's basketball's Mariano Rivera, the greatest door-slammer ever. He's been doing it for more than 10 years now, all the way back to when he was a skinny kid playing with Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets. Then he took his springtime show to Los Angeles. Remember when he hit that loose ball three-pointer for the Lakers to break Sacramento's heart? Now, it's the San Antonio Spurs who are lucky to have him because virtually by himself Horry won Game 5 here to give the Spurs control of the series again.
His three-pointer with 5.8 seconds left won it. His left-handed dunk the sequence before set it up.
Nobody in the building had a worse game than Horry the first three quarters. Nobody. "I said to myself at halftime, 'Rob, you've got to do better than this.' " He couldn't finish, couldn't hold on to the ball, his shoulder was killing him. All he did was hit the last shot of the third quarter, of course a three-pointer, then go on to score 18 more for a total of 21 points in the last 12 minutes 1 second, plus the overtime. Rasheed Wallace made the silly, stupid, unforgivably dumb basketball mistake of leaving Horry to double-team Manu Ginobili at the end of overtime with his Pistons ahead by two. You could hear everybody in the building who has ever seen Horry play in June moan.
Three.
Mr. Big Shot, Robert Horry.
Big Shot Bob. Big Shot Bobby.
"Can you make it Big Shot Rob," he asked afterward. "Can you make it R-O-B? I mean, Bob. that's just not me."
By any name, this is the way he'll be remembered, firing a three-pointer to win the game, to crush the other guy. "I want to win a game," Horry said later. "I don't want to go into overtime. I'm always going for three."
The person who ought to thank Horry the most is Tim Duncan, who tried everything to sabotage what for most of four quarters had been a great, great 26-point, 19-rebound performance.
Has a great basketball player ever melted down to the degree Duncan did in the fourth quarter Sunday night? Asked to make free throws with the game, the season and perhaps a championship on the line, Duncan choked. He missed six straight foul shots. And when Ginobili's drive to the basket produced a dunk attempt in the final second of regulation to win the game, Duncan flubbed it. At 6 feet 11, he couldn't dunk, couldn't lay it in, couldn't gather it in. That's seven attempts with nobody guarding him, and Duncan -- one of the five best players of his generation and a man already in possession of two championship rings -- couldn't convert a single one of them.
Oh, and let's not forget the pass he couldn't hold onto in the final 50 seconds that resulted in an unforced San Antonio turnover. It was painful to watch a player of such stature play the way Duncan did at the end of Game 5. We may have to go back to Greg Norman.
Anyway, Duncan is off the hook and the Pistons are on it, now facing two games in San Antonio, needing two wins to successfully defend their title.
Because of Horry. The same Horry we simply don't notice from November through the first of May is Reggie Jackson the last month of every season.
Duncan, thankful as he is, couldn't help but take a playful shot at Horry. "He doesn't do anything all season," Duncan said. "He doesn't feel like playing. He shows up sometimes. It's like, 'I've been hanging out the entire season. It's time to play now.' "
Of course, that's how it looks . . . because that's how it is.
Horry, who takes nothing seriously and least of all himself, loves these moments because he knows he isn't the star, knows he won't ultimately be held as accountable as Olajuwon in Houston, as Shaq or Kobe in Los Angeles, as Duncan in San Antonio.
Just when it looked like The Champs had gotten their groove back, they let Horry get loose. He hit 5 of 6 three-pointers. He grabbed seven rebounds, more than anybody on the Spurs except Duncan. He was San Antonio's entire bench effort, considering Devin Brown had one free throw and Brent Barry had one basket.
Those of us demanding a great game finally got one, a thriller, one of the best Finals games the last 10 years. It was a game that had, quite literally, everything from Horry's dramatics to Duncan's meltdown to Chauncey Billups's 34 points, 7 assists and 1 turnover, to Bruce Bowen's smothering defense on Richard Hamilton. The lead changed hands 12 times. The game was tied 18 times. The Spurs scored 42 points in the paint, the Pistons 40. The Spurs scored 17 fast-break points, the Pistons 18. It was back-and-forth the way a championship game ought to be, both teams desperately trying to win the pivotal game of the series.
Larry Brown had fretted openly before the game that his team would have to play its best game of the season to win. He just sensed that the Spurs were tired of hearing how pathetic they were in Games 3 and 4, which was only the truth. And ultimately it had the single ingredient any great game has to have: a hero. That would be Horry, who admitted he was praying he could get his 34-year-old legs all the way to the basket after taking off for that dunk, the one that aggravated the stinger he already has in his shoulder. "I'm going through the air thinking, 'Please let me get there,' " he said. But there's none of this mortality stuff now, not in the wake of doing what only he does to such an absurd degree.
"He's Big Game Bob," Ginobili said, not yet having gotten the memo about the name change. "He does whatever he wants to do."
Earlier in the series, Horry passed Michael Jordan for most three-point baskets in NBA Finals history. He told my friend J.A. Adande of the Los Angeles Times last week that he will be recalled as an "I remember him," kind of player. Asked at what point he told his players not to leave Horry alone for any reason behind the three-point arc, a dejected Larry Brown said, "Two months ago."
Modest as he is, Horry has a great sense of his place in playoff history. "It's the playoffs, man," he said. "If you don't get excited about the playoffs, you don't deserve to be playing basketball."
