Decades After Winning 3 Rings with Robert Horry, Shaquille O'Neal Likens Him to $7 Billion Franchise Character

Satagni Sikder|Published August 01, 2023

Credit: USA Today Sports

The curious case of Robert Horry has intrigued NBA fans for a long time, especially younger fans who never saw him play on the court. The fact that a player, who didn’t have a single All-Star appearance in his career, can win seven NBA Championship rings with three of the most dominant dynastic teams in modern NBA history seems almost impossible. But Horry did exactly that. The veteran forward mastered the art of being at the right place at the right time. Acknowledging this incredible feat of the 52-year-old, Horry’s former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Shaquille O’Neal likened him to one of the most popular characters ever, the star of a $7 billion franchise, decades after winning three Championships together.

Horry won multiple NBA championships with three of the four NBA franchises he played for throughout the course of his career; the 1994 and 1995 Houston Rockets, the 2000-2002 Lakers, and the 2005 and 2007 San Antonio Spurs. The 6’10 forward exemplified the idiom of being at the right place at the right time, pretty much like the popular spy character James Bond.

Unlike popular detective characters like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, who solved mysteries through deductive reasoning sitting in a room smoking cigars, Ian Fleming’s James Bond relied on several chance encounters, lucky escapes and plot-friendly coincidences during his adventurous escapades to get the job done. Shaquille O’Neal seems to think Robert Horry’s corpus reflects a similar style.

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Horry was present in three dynastic teams since the 90s and ended his career with more rings than Michael Jordan despite never winning a single MVP or Finals MVP award. Shaq highlighted the remarkable feat on his Instagram stories by sharing a post that compared Horry with James Bond.

However, it will be wrong to assume that Horry didn’t deserve those seven rings. He was called ‘Big Shot Bob’ for a reason. Horry served as an important player coming off the bench during those Championship campaigns, averaging decent minutes and respectable numbers. The coaches in Horry’s teams could rely on him to make big shots in crunch time to carry his team over the hump.

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Horry made many big shots in his career, including his Game 7 midrange jumper against the Seattle SuperSonics in the Western Conference Semifinals in 1993 with 32.7 seconds of regulation time remaining, his game winning three-pointer in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals in 2002, his clutch three-pointer and four free throws in the dying seconds of Game 3 of the 2001 NBA Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers etc. Besides, Horry also hit the game-winning three-pointer in Game 5 of the 2005 NBA Finals with 5.9 seconds remaining, to take his tally to 21 points in fourth quarter and OT combined.

Robert Horry has played with some of the greatest centers of all-time, including Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Tim Duncan. However, he recently chose Hakeem ‘the Dream’ Olajuwon as the best center he has played with, ahead of Shaq and Duncan.

Shaq and Horry played under Phil Jackson for the Lakers that three-peated from 2000 to 2002. It’s good to see the Big Diesel giving his former teammate some love years after retiring from the game.

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About the author

Satagni Sikder

Satagni Sikder is the Lead Editor of the NBA Division at The SportsRush. Satagni is an experienced NBA reporter with over 350 published articles to his name. He has also led the NBA team of another popular media company previously. Satagni holds a Master's Degree in English from a reputed University and has always been fascinated by the faculty of language to translate ideas into beautiful and powerful creations. He is a dedicated student of the NBA and presents a fresh perspective of the sport to the readers. Satagni's articles are handcrafted for diehard hoop fans and basketball aficionados.