Horry’s Offense Looked Pointless

Some days, he feels as if he’s getting by on offense. And then there are the days such as Wednesday, when Robert Horry didn’t get anything. Not a point.

“It’s been out of sync for a while,” the Laker power forward admitted.

Horry went into Friday night’s game against the Houston Rockets, his former team, having averaged 5.2 points over the previous five outings. He went scoreless in two of those, after 25 minutes and five shots against the Warriors and 15 minutes without anything but four rebounds, two rebounds and one steal Dec. 3 at Denver.

That had him at 7.7 points overall before Friday, though the 7.8 rebounds was a credible showing for 32.3 minutes and the 1.78 steals and 1.67 blocks made Horry the only player in the NBA ranked in the top 20 in both. The biggest problem, he said, has been still adjusting to playing with his back to the basket as a power forward instead of more out on the floor as the small forward he used to be.

“It’s just going to take some adjustment time,” said Horry, who scored 10 points Friday. “I don’t think anybody’s worried about it. The coaches haven’t said anything to me, so I’m not worried. I think other teams better start to worry about it if I start looking for it.”

*

A day after being cleared to begin individual workouts, Shaquille O’Neal went about three hours in two sessions Friday and reported no problems with the strained abdominal muscle.

That makes six days O’Neal says he has been pain free. He is able to make his spin move down the lane and come to a jump stop with no difficulty.

O’Neal still needs to get the thumbs-up to rejoin Laker practices before he can target a date for a return to game action.