SAS vs. SAC: Harvey: "Horry vs. his karmic opposite"

[Hawkins]

A SA Express story about Horry for LAL fans who still care including his killer shot in 2002 for LAL..

Buck Harvey: Horry vs. his karmic opposite — how the haunting continues

San Antonio Express-News

Robert Horry couldn't remember the year, and he had an excuse. His shot against the Sacramento Kings in 2002 is just one on a list.

After yet another one last June against Detroit, that one on an even larger stage, who can blame Horry for confusing the years?

But Sacramento remembers. When Horry goes back there, he hears boos as soon as he stands to enter a game. He will again next week.

That's why what happens next will be both familiar and haunting to Sacramento. This No.1 vs. No.8 series will be tighter than most think; several matchups favor the Kings. But because of Sacramento's personnel that Horry fits against, because he's made for this tension, Horry will change everything again.

Can Sacramento bear to watch?

Horry played for the Lakers in 2002, and he does remember where he shot the ball with .6 remaining in the game (left of center court, behind the arc).

The Kings remember more, because that was their time to break through. They won 61 games that season, most in the NBA, and the Spurs tied for second with 58.

But whereas the Spurs lost to the Lakers in five games, the Kings proved more rugged against the defending champs in the Western Conference finals. The Kings took a 20-point lead in Game 4 in the Staples Center, and, if they had held on, they would have gone back to Sacramento up 3-1.

The Lakers instead scratched back until they trailed by just two in the final seconds. Kobe Bryant missed a baseline jumper for the tie, and Shaquille O'Neal rebounded and missed.

Vlade Divac, the Kings' center then, stretched with one hand and managed to swat the ball. It wasn't a foolish move. With the final seconds about to expire, why not clear the ball from the basket?

Horry needed a few things to go right last June, too. He needed Rasheed Wallace to leave him at the end of Game 5, and he needed Manu Ginobili to swing the perfect pass past a double team.

But this was something else. This was Horry standing at the 3-point line when most would have been involved in the scrum inside. This was Horry waiting, as if the gift was expected, in perfect position for Divac's tap.

What was Horry thinking then? "Nothing," Horry said later. "I just said, 'Oh, look at this right here, maybe I should put this one up and win this game!'"

Divac later called the play lucky, and Horry agrees. He knows he's been fortunate to play with three big men in his career (Hakeem Olajuwon, O'Neal and Tim Duncan). And when asked what it takes to repeat as champions, Horry's answer follows the same theme.

"This may sound funny coming from me," he said this week. "But you need luck."

You also need a shooting stroke, as well as nerves. When asked if playoff games in Sacramento are different than others, he nodded. "The place feels smaller," he said.

The squint in his eyes revealed that, yes, he likes playing in the tension of Sacramento.

Horry hasn't always come through. His last-second miss against the Spurs in Game5 in 2003 changed that series, too. He has, in effect, already won two titles for the Spurs.

The second one is more like him. And when he stood up in Detroit, taking over a fourth quarter the Spurs had to have, he accomplished something few have. If Horry wins his seventh NBA ring this season, only a half-dozen players in league history will have won more. All of them played for the Celtics.

The Kings are his karmic opposite, and that day in 2002 changed Sacramento. The Lakers went on to win the series in seven games, eventually beating the Nets for their third consecutive title. The Kings haven't made the conference finals since.

"We're still going through it," Jerry Reynolds, a longtime franchise figure, told the Los Angeles Times this season. "I know it sounds hokey, but it was a crusher, just an absolute crusher."

So here come the Kings to another city, with a defender who can slow Ginobili, with a point guard to counter Tony Parker, with a chance to pull the upset of the playoffs.

And waiting at the 3-point line?

Spurs in six.