Horry Says He’ll Be Ready to Go

By midafternoon Friday, two days before the Lakers would open their first-round playoff series against the Portland Trail Blazers, Robert Horry said he would play, without a doubt.

Horry has developed a hematoma, or collection of blood, beneath his abdominal muscle, but he withstood two hours of treatment Friday morning, jogged through parts of a practice and afterward matched 24-foot jumpers in a contest with five other Lakers.

A savvy power forward who is the Lakers’ best chance at defending Portland’s rangy Rasheed Wallace, Horry has not made it to the end of either of his last two games, leaving because of sharp abdominal pain after 22 minutes Monday and three minutes Wednesday.

“I feel fine,” Horry said in a voice a bit too high.

But, he insisted, “No doubts at all. I’ll be ready and willing to go.”

By the end of practice, Horry stood, near Phil Jackson, during a five-on-five scrimmage. He leaned against the basket stanchion, his hands wrapped in the bottom of his purple jersey.

When it was done, he grabbed a basketball and loped as he does to the other end of the floor, and flicked jump shots without effort. He chased his misses easily, without apparent regard to the injury that could shape the final days of the Lakers’ hopes to three-peat.

He said he had little or no pain.

“If I do have it I’m going to just ignore it. So I’ll be all right,” said Horry, who frequently experiences discomfort in his knees, hips and back. He sat out one game this season because of a tight hamstring, an ailment that bothered him sporadically for months.

“I think I can [play through it],” he said. “All through my career, I’ve been playing with some kind of little injury. So I should be able to handle this.”

It is critical to the Lakers that he does. As Jackson reminded everyone Friday, a run through the Western Conference playoffs probably means playing through power forwards Wallace, Tim Duncan and Chris Webber, some of the most talented players in the league.

Offensively, the Laker strengths lie elsewhere, at center with Shaquille O’Neal and swingman with Kobe Bryant. If they win their third consecutive title, the Lakers will have come with three starters at power forward, the Samaki Walker/Horry combination following first A.C. Green and then Horace Grant.

By last season’s playoffs, however, Horry was getting nearly as many minutes as Grant, and most of the fourth-quarter playing time, just as he would this season.

The fact that these are the playoffs, Horry said, helps deaden his abdominal discomfort.

“It doesn’t mask the pain,” he said, “but you realize these games are very important, that you have to go through them. If it’s not anything that’s going to keep you from playing the game after that, then you keep going. But, for the most part, you ignore pain.”

Jackson, who admires Horry’s ability to stabilize his game in the playoffs, said he was not yet willing to assume Horry would be ready for the start of the series.

“We hope so,” he said. “We’re optimistic that another day [will help], that [today] he’ll get out on the basketball court and do some things and then play on Sunday.”

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Less Horry, of course, would mean the need for more Shaq. Walker, Slava Medvedenko and Mark Madsen would see the minutes spillover, but O’Neal would feel the defensive crush and the offensive responsibility.

“I think when you go to the playoffs, you start looking at his playoff figures,” Jackson said. “That’s what a Shaq effort is all about. We think 15 rebounds and 35 points.”

O’Neal wouldn’t argue that, probably. He averaged 30.4 points and 15.4 rebounds last postseason, though that was before his toe seized.

Still, the idea of past playoffs set up the best quote of the early postseason, from O’Neal, discussing the difference between the Trail Blazers with Arvydas Sabonis, and the Trail Blazers without Sabonis, who retired last year.

“I made Sabonis quit two years ago,” O’Neal said. “If he comes back, I’ll make him quit again.”