Robert Horry experienced incredible success almost everywhere he went in his 16-year NBA career. He won two titles with Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets, three with the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, and two with the Duncan-Parker-Ginobili Spurs, making clutch shots at every stop along the way.
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Due to these highly successful stints, people sometimes forget that he also spent a grand total of 32 games with the Suns during the 1996-97 season, but that was more than enough to tell him that he needed to get out.
Horry is the winningest player in the modern era. Nobody since John Havlicek can match his seven rings, so it’s fair to say that he knows a good culture when he sees one. Phoenix was the antithesis of that, which is why he couldn’t wait to leave after the Suns traded for him.
On his recent appearance on Byron Scott’s Fast Break, Horry explained why he hated being on the Suns so much after Phoenix traded Charles Barkley for him, Sam Cassell, Chucky Brown, and Mark Bryant.
“We get there and we practicin’, dudes don’t wanna practice, dudes don’t even wanna come to practice,” he remembered. “And it was just like no wonder we were kickin’ your ass in the playoffs, because you guys don’t practice hard.”
Under Rudy Tomjanovich in Houston, Horry only knew one way. “We always said we gotta make our practices so hard that the games are easy,” he said. “Man, these dudes are sittin’ on the sidelines, I think if we’d have had cigars, they’d be smoking cigars, man. The culture was this bad.”
Horry couldn’t wait to get out, and he got his wish shortly after he infamously threw a towel in assistant coach Danny Ainge’s face. A couple days later, head coach Cotton Fitzsimmons abruptly retired, and when Ainge was named as his replacement, Horry knew his time in Phoenix was coming to an end.
As far as he was concerned, that was for the best. “I didn’t wanna be there,” he said. “At the time, my daughter was sick, too. I had one year left on my deal, I’m like, ‘OK, I’m out of here.'”
“They could have offered me all the money in the world, I wasn’t gonna stay in Phoenix, ’cause I didn’t like the city, I didn’t like [team owner Jerry] Colangelo, I didn’t like the team, I didn’t like the uniforms, there was nothing I liked.” He did clarify that the fans were great, but “the culture there was not what I wanted.”
Once he got out, he made the most of his new lease on life. The Lakers eventually brought in Phil Jackson and pulled off a three-peat, with Horry a key X factor. He later went to the Spurs and kept on winning before he finally retired in 2008.
