Reply With Quote
Seriously?
What if Michael Jordan didn't score all those points, would he still be a HOF'er?
You can do that with any player.
Just to go back to this...I can't even believe Dennis Rodman's merits even need to be discussed....I personally hate the guy but he is a top 3 rebounder in the history of the game...that alone puts him in the Hall IMO.
Really Dennis' off the court antics, and questionable sportsmanship and at ude are what hurt his case...it's damn sure not his game.
Seriously?
What if Michael Jordan didn't score all those points, would he still be a HOF'er?
You can do that with any player.
Did MJ score all his points in 5-10 plays?
Really? What 5-10 plays got Wilt into the Hall? Or Bird? Or DRob?
Did those points lead to as many championships as Horry's 5-10 plays did?
Really? What 5-10 plays got Wilt into the Hall? Or Bird? Or DRob?
No...it was statistical dominance, but all you need to know is that Horry has as many championships as they do, combined, which tells you what statistical dominance is worth without oh, 5-10 plays to make it count for something.
One could easily make the argument that had they played with Horry, they'd have more championships, whereas you can't really say the same thing about their potential impact on his career.
Horry defies conventional benchmarks and criteria...
How many 7-5 players never missed the second round of the playoffs in their 15 year career?
How many of them have 7 rings?
How many of them are the all time leader in playoff games played?
The all time leader in finals 3's?
Second all time in playoff 3's?
Won multiple championships with 3 different teams in a starters role?
Playing 3 different positons no less?
How many of them hold the single game finals record for steals?
Or playoff record for threes without a miss?
How many of them went off for 19 points in a 4th quarter in game 5 of the finals?
Robert Horry defies conventional weights for HOF worthiness...
There are no other 7 and 5 players like him.
He also gets the Bill Russell card...he won.
Last edited by whottt; 06-14-2009 at 05:52 PM.
So then is Derek Fisher just a couple more big shots from the Hall?
You know...I can only think of one potnetial championship swinger Fisher made, and it didn't swing a championship. The next championship he wins having done it will be his first...
He'll then have 6 more to go to match Horry.
This is a serious question. Can you name all of Robert Horry's big shots?
I remember the one against the Sacramento Kings in 2002 and the one in game 5 against the Pistons in 2005.
Now, I know he's hit other big clutch shots. But, do you really remember them specifically? I know he hit some big shots with Houston, but I don't recall them specifically or whether they were game-winners or game-tying shots or whether they were the difference between winning a championship or even winning a game.
I remember two specific jumpers that were huge, clutch shots. Do you really remember all of his other big shots? Were they game winners or game tying shots?
Again, serious question, because I don't.
Some good candidates:
There was a youtube link in another thread listing his top 10 moments (not all of them shots).
So how many of them were game winning shots or game tying shots?
Just off the top of my head:
#1. The first big shot hit he was against the Spurs in the 95 WCF Game 1. The game winner. The only shot he made of the game.
He hit a bunch of ing shots against the Spurs when he was with the Rockets. He didn't hurt the Spurs much with LA, he did his damage to us as a Rocket. Always hit daggers. It was his defense on Duncan that hurt us in LA, and that was the main reason the Spurs signed him, so LA couldn't defend Duncan with him.
#2. Was the 95 Finals. When Hakeem took on Shaq, Robert Horry was the second best player after Hakeem on the Rockets. He had some huge scoring and rebounding games, and he also had 6 steals in one of those game. A finals record.
#3. Game 3 against the Sixers in 01. Horry closed this game ing game out while Shaq and Kobe choked. AI had just come back to tie the series, basically all by himself and LA was in trouble. Horry did everything in the closing out of this game, passing, blocking shots, steals, scoring, getting to the FT line. He scored like the last 7 points of hte game. IMHO, this may have been his best performance.
#4. Against Portland the first round of WCSF in I think 02. As the clock was winding down Kobe kicked it out to him and he missed, with like 4 seconds left on the clock. The Lakers got the ball back and then Kobe kicked it to him again, and he hit it for the win, or tie with about 1 second left.
4. Sacremento
5. Detroit. I want you tell me with a straight face that Robert Horry didn't just totally ing stab your team in the heart in that game. Stabbed them, directly the heart.
That was a ing superstar performance.
You guys are right Horry didn't do it every game, just when it could make the difference in a championship, as if that doesn't ing count.
#6. The hit on Nash. Horry was just a shadow of himself at this point, he was on the court very briefly, and in a span of seconds took Amare and Diaw out for the next game. And yes, I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
I would say the hit on West last year, but that didn't result in a championship.
So I guess if you took away Jordan's: (1) shot over Ehlo in 1989; (2) buzzer-beater in Game 1 of the 1997 Finals; and (3) the game-winner over Russell in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals, the question of his Hall-worthiness would be a really, really difficult call.
I won't be distressed if Horry is enshrined, but if it were my vote to cast, he wouldn't get it, despite my affection for him as a basketball player.
His defense is also overlooked, when the Lakers were on the 3 peat run in so called era of the PF, Horry was the guy defending Sheed, and Webber, and Duncan.
When Hakeem was beating Barkley and Malone in the playoffs, Horry was the guy defending them.
When Hakeem beat Shaq in the playoffs, Hakeem had Horry. When Shaq beat Hakeem, he also had Horry. This is not so true with Duncan, but Duncan had Robinson, and that tandem well I'm probably homering out, but that was the best of them before Drob broke down.
When the Spurs signed Horry in 2004, they did so because he was the best Duncan defender in the NBA. By Duncan's own admission.
And finally to paraphrase Gregg Poppovich, "Forget about his scoring. He'll do something instantaneously in the middle of a play that is smarter than what the coaches would come up with analyzing the game film."
I don't think it can be overrstated that Horry was replaced by Karl Malone and Charles Barkley, and they weren't better for it.
I also think Robert Horry was a huge reason the Spurs never truly felt the loss of David Robinson, because Drob at the end of his career was what Horry had been for just about all of his, a role player to the nth degree.
And he always hit daggers, I don't care what his shooting PCT is...if your team played him enough I don't have to explain this to you, he's the dude you hated to see shooting it when the pressure was on.
Last edited by whottt; 06-14-2009 at 08:50 PM.
Jordan is the best player off all time, or so they say, of course you could subtract one or more elements from him and he will still be a HOF'er, but that's not true of all HOF'ers.
Shoogar's suggestion subtracted the absolute essence of Horry's game, then weighed his hall worthiness...a lot of HOF'er will fair to measure up if you do that to them. I mean not all of them are Jordan.
Hence my point in the rebuttal, and even Jordan might not be if you remove the absolute best part of his game, which is his scoring, not his memorable shots.
You remove the best of Jordan's game and his hall worthiness rests on his clutch shooting and his championships, the same case I am making for Horry. Unfortunatley Shoogar didn't go where I wanted him to when I made that statement so that I couild make that point.
He's a HOF'er...he really is, unless your only measure is stats.
The 1995 WCFs alone puts Horry over Rodman. The fact Horry came up big in the series due to Rodman becoming unravelled and refused to guard Horry to hang around the rim for rebounds and laying down on the sidelines with his sneakers off.
Using Whott's logic, let us look at some other players who hit big shots and played on multiple championship teams:
Mario Elie
Steve Kerr
Sam Cassell
John Paxon
Kenny Smith
Yep. Let's place all of those players into the Hall.
Well, and the Horry + Rodman arguments would certainly seem to indicate that among the greatest crimes in American history is the fact that Michael Cooper hasn't been enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
I was looking at Horry's wiki page, he's mentioned in like six songs...
Plus he's got his own song:
As long as humans have been on this planet they have sang songs about memorable deeds and the heros that did them...
This is no less true than it ever was...how many songs is Jordan in? Hakeem? Shaq? Duncan?
They sing songs about you, give you your own song(and it's a good song except for the Laker elements), you are HOF'er, in any HOF, in any time, in any where.
FAME, not STATS.
Massive failure.
Are you deliberately ignoring huge elements of Horry's career that they lack, or do you just think I am unaware of them?
Do any of those guys have 7 freaking championships?
Uh, no they don't.
Are any of those guys the all time leader in the playoff games played?
Uh, no they aren't. You know who was before Horry? Kareem Abduul Jabbar.
Are any of those guys the all time leader in Finals Threes?
Uh, no they aren't. You know who was before Horry? Michael Jordan.
Are any of those guys in the top 10 all time for like blocks, steals, rebounds and 3 pointers in playoff history?
Um, no they aren't.
Ironically enough, those guys were all 3 point shooters, yet Robert Horry holds more 3 point records in the playoffs than any of them. And he also pulled down rebounds and blocked shots and defended HOF'ers while he was doing it.
Did any of them win les for 3 different teams, multiple times, starting at all three frontline positions?
Um, no they didn't.
Did any of those guys make the playoffs every year of their career?
No they didn't.
Which automatically excludes them from making the second round every year of their career, unlike Robert Horry.
Did Michael Jordan make the second round every year of his career?
No he didn't. He didn't even make the playoffs every year.
Neither did Shaq.
Neither did Hakeem.
Neither did anyone else Robert Horry played with other, now that Tim Duncan has failed to do so.
IF these things are so ing easy to do, then how come Horry is the only one that's done them?
By all means only look at stats and use that as your entire and total criteria, just don't do it under the assumption that it is an accurate refelction of Horry's career...on the contrary, it is completely oblivious to just about all of his career.
Last edited by whottt; 06-14-2009 at 09:11 PM.
I think that's a pretty massive stretch. Comparing Jordan's scoring to Horry's handful of clutch moments in playoff games is anything but a reasonable comparison.
What you've done in that comparison is ignore the fact that Jordan's greatness -- or the greatness that defines any Hall of Famer -- isn't something that's only evident from time-to-time Instead, the greatness that defines a Hall of Famer, to me at least, is the fact that it is sustained over long stretches that go many, many years in length. And, as importantly, that sustained greatness isn't something that reveals itself in isolated bursts; it is pervasive over the course of the player's career, game-in and game-out.
That Jordan is among the greatest scorers to ever play basketball and maintained that over more than 1,200 professional games is vastly different than the fact that Robert Horry made clutch shots in about 7 playoff games and played a role on a lot of successful teams -- in fact, teams that played more playoff games than any other player in history. Jordan was the primary reason why his teams were successful (and he was aided by some of the guys around him); Horry was the guy who aided the great players who were his teammates and whose pervasively-evident talents were the primary reason thsoe teams were successful.
I don't see how you get anywhere with the argument quoted above.
Simple, because the ultimate goal in the game is to win championships, and IMO, championships are better used to judge non-superstars than they are superstars.
Jordan scored all those points, played the exact number of years Horry did, yet he didn't win more championships than Horry did, and according to most, Jordan is the GOAT. So if Horry more championships without ever playing with the GOAT than the GOAT himself won, then obviously supporting players make a difference in championships won, or else Jordan would have the most.
And since a championship is the ultimate gol of the game, that is a Hall Worthy Contribution when done on the massive scale Horry did it, if anything is, much moreso than merely putting up stats.
Robert Horry is not a typical player and will easily defy any and all attempts to shoehorn him into that catergory.
And it's not the Hall of Superstars or the Hall of Stats, it's the basketball hall fame, and it's membership is not exclusive to guys that met statistical benchmarks. It states that nowhere, and I imagine they had and have very good reasons for not putting that limit on eligibility.
Benchmarks are a fine method of judging hall worthiness in most cases, but they are not, nor should they ever be, the absolute and total. And they are not always the best measure...
Particularly in this case.
When the only players with 7 or more championships rings are members of the greatest dynasty of all time, and Robert Horry who was not, that is an alarmingly unusual cir stance. It would seem on the superficial level that player was doing to special to contribute...a closer examanation of Robert Horry's career easily shines light on the fact that, yes he was doing something special to contribute. It is easy to see it...it's those 5-10 plays.
Shaq's era?
Kobe's era?
Duncan's era?
Dynasty? The only true dynasty of this era was Robert Horry.
It was Robert Horry's era, because he was the fixture in the finals, not them.
And his team never lost either.
He is not a typical player.
Actually Tim said that about Rasheed Wallace.
I dont really care whether he gets it or not but I do think he deserves to be a HOF. HOFs are those who had great basketball careers or had a great contribution to the sport of basketball. Statistics help but they don't always name HOFs.
Whether he deserves to be in the HOF or not, let me say this in defense of Horry. His strength... his specialty... was much more than hitting game winning shots. There are often certain moments that can change the outcome of a game. It might be a matter of stopping a catch-up run, turning the momentum in your team's favor, silencing the crowd, taking away the opponents' will, or giving hope to your own teammates and getting them back into the game. But a lot of games turn on just a couple of plays, and everyone in the arena can feel it when those things happen. A block or a steal on one end, and a 3-pointer on the other, maybe draw a cheap offensive foul, and suddenly the whole game feels different. Robert Horry always had an uncanny sense for those moments.
People used to say that he shifted gears in March. But he shifted gears in individual games - just when it would do the most damage to the opposing teams. Game-winning shots always make the highlight reels. But what a lot of reporters (and fans) tend to forget, is how often Robert Horry was the reason that the game was close enough to win with a buzzer-beater. Or how often he kept the other team from making a game close enough for them to possibly win with a buzzer-beater of their own.
I have a mental image of Horry scoring a basket, and then shambling down the court slowly - and suddenly turning to steal the in-bounds pass and dunk it. I've watched him do it a dozen times or more (probably many more) and it always demoralized the other team. He could turn a 10 point lead into a 5 point lead in a couple of seconds, and make the other team start pressing to make their own shots.
The last-second shots were just one aspect of Horry's real talent - he knew how to cut the heart out of the other team. He knew just when to do something special - but he also had the ability to actually make it happen. If it were only a few times, it might be luck. But he did it repeatedly, over the course of his whole career. That's one of a basketball skill.
And yes, it did translate into championships. Houston probably wouldn't have won either of those rings without Horry. (I watched A LOT of Rockets games in those days.) For instance, in the 1995 Finals, the Rockets won 120-118 in overtime. People remember that Nick Anderson missed 4 free throws, and that Kenny Smith made the late 3-pointer to take the game to OT. But they forget that the Magic jumped out to a 20-point lead in the first half, and that it was Robert Horry's 5 blocks and 3 steals that shut down Orlando's momentum long enough for his team to climb back into the game. Without him, Smith's shot at the end would have been moot. Of course, it didn't hurt that he nailed back-to-back 3-pointers to open up the overtime. That game killed the Magic, and the series was basically over as soon as it started.
If there's not a special place in the HOF for Horry, maybe there should be. It's sort of like when Bill Bates played for the Cowboys. He made such a difference on special teams, that the NFL actually added a spot in the Pro Bowl for a special teams guy. Bates got inducted into the "Madden Hall of Fame", because Madden recognized how a guy like that could change the outcome of a game. He will probably never be in the official NFL Hall of Fame, but Madden understands just how valuable Bates was to those Superbowl teams. If there was a Madden Hall of Fame for basketball, Horry would definitely be in it.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions