He Makes Winning Five NBA Titles Look Easy

Robert Horry is my hero.

Name another person who has accomplished so much in his field while expending the minimum amount of energy to do so. Horry isn’t lazy, but he’ll never be accused of overexerting himself, either. It’s a sort of ...

“Efficiency of movement?” Horry suggests.

Exactly.

How else to explain the disparity between output and results? He has averaged 7.5 points for his career, yet only 11 players in NBA history have a larger championship ring collection than Horry’s five, and no active player has as many.

He wasn’t the driving force behind those championships, but he wasn’t along for the ride either.

He made his share of big shots (with three more three-pointers he’ll break Michael Jordan’s Finals record) and made unheralded contributions to help the Houston Rockets win in 1994 and ’95 and the Lakers three-peat from 2000 to 2002.

With the San Antonio Spurs holding a 1-0 lead over the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals, Horry is three victories away from winning No. 6. That would put him in the same class as Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Scottie Pippen, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek.

Only six players, all members of the Boston Celtic dynasty in the 1960s, have won more, topped by ringmaster Bill Russell’s 11.

But none of them enjoyed themselves more and stressed out less than Horry.

And I’m not the only one who wants to live La Vida Horry.

“I wish I could be more like him in some ways,” Spur Coach Gregg Popovich said, “because he is happy every minute, win, lose, rain, sun, doesn’t matter. He’s great for a basketball team. Our guys love him. He keeps everybody loose. They all respect his basketball abilities and knowledge, and he’s been important for us in that regard.”

So what’s the secret?

“You’ve got to have a nonchalant attitude, to a certain degree,” Horry said. “You’ve got to have fun and enjoy. Playing with Kobe [Bryant], he took stuff so serious. There’s more to life than just basketball. There were some days in practice, he’d be mad because he would be losing in practice. You’ve got to enjoy yourself. I think that’s the thing that I learned most.”

That said, Horry doesn’t go around the locker room trying to spread the word. It’s something that must be found within.

“I can preach that, but it might not work for you,” Horry said. “Everything doesn’t work for everybody. Some guys need that extra push. I don’t think [it] would work for Kobe. His attitude is what makes him good at what he does. For me, it’s like, just blow it out, just start over.”

See, playing basketball wasn’t a lifelong dream of Horry’s. He loved baseball as a kid in Andalusia, Ala., but then he grew early, sprouting four inches one summer. In the elementary school class pictures he stood almost as tall as the teacher; people would look at the photos and ask if he was an assistant.

One day his older brother Ken said, “You’re tall, let’s play.”

“I started getting better at it,” Horry said. “I thought, ‘OK, I can get a free education out of it.’ ”

He came from a family of teachers, and that’s what Horry figured he would do. At least he could get a college scholarship. He went to Alabama, because it was close to home and his mother told him to, and during a conversation with teammates his sophomore year they told him he would make it to the NBA. The Houston Rockets chose him with the 11th pick in the 1992 draft.

“I just wanted to get to the NBA,” Horry says 13 years later. “I never thought I would have a career that I’ve had now. After I got to the NBA I had one goal: stay in the league for a while.”

In 1996 he was traded to the Phoenix Suns, part of the big deal that brought Charles Barkley to Houston. It was with Phoenix that the only regret Horry has in his career occurred.

Frustrated that he seemed to be moving backward instead of breaking out, Horry snapped. When Coach Danny Ainge, whom Horry already disliked from their playing days, took him out of a game, Horry threw a towel in his face as Ainge walked by him at the bench.

“I wish I would have handled it totally different,” Horry says.

Phoenix had to get rid of him, so the Suns traded him to the Lakers.

“In a way I’m mad I did it,” Horry said. “But in a way I’m glad I did it, because it sent me to the Lakers and I won three more championships.”

Even when he makes a mistake things work out for him. Things just have a way of falling into place in his life, even before his life. In the late 1960s, a man named Robert Horry was supposed to have a date. The woman couldn’t make it, so she sent her friend Lelie instead. Robert wound up marrying Lelie and the gene combination that would produce the next Robert Horry was in place.

But there’s much more to Horry’s success than a simple matter of right place, right time. At this stage it’s an accumulation of all that he’s learned, a collection of tricks and intuition that makes his contributions on the defensive end just as valuable as his three-pointers.

He does the things Spur assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo calls “goofy,” such as poke the ball out of an opponent’s hands. He draws charges. And he’s always in the right position to help out his teammates.

“Robert Horry has tremendous basketball instincts, and a lot of it is not within our scheme,” Carlesimo said. “It’s just that Robert knows how to play basketball, particularly now with the experience he’s had.”

Said Piston forward Rasheed Wallace, “He plays mind games. He’s that crafty veteran.”

Somehow, he always manages to look better come springtime; his scoring average has increased in the playoffs in all but two of his seasons. (One of those two was the 2003 playoffs, when he missed 36 of 38 three-pointers and was subsequently let go by the Lakers)

“During this time, it’s a little bit more pressure, a lot more pressure and you’re able to focus more,” Horry said. “You need to keep watching basketball constantly so your basketball knowledge or whatever you want to call it kind of heightens, so you just go out and you just play basketball and you have fun at it.

“Plus, I take about six or seven months to get into shape.”

He laughed, the laughter of someone who always seems to come through at the end.

“I’ve been in the right place at the right time,” Horry said. “I feel bad for those guys [without rings]. Like Barkley’s a great player, [Patrick] Ewing’s a great player. They can always say ‘Hey, I’m a Hall of Famer.’ I’ll never be able to say that. I’m just going to say, ‘Hey, I won some championships.’ But I’ll be forgotten about. Those guys will always be remembered.”

Would he trade any of his rings to be in the Hall of Fame?

“Nope,” he said quickly.

When you’re Robert Horry, you don’t want to trade places with anyone.

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande go to latimes.com/Adande.