Horry thinks young as he preps for 16th season
Web Posted: 10/04/2007 12:21 AM CDT
Mike Monroe
San Antonio Express-News
When Spurs forward Robert Horry celebrated his birthday on Aug. 25, his personal trainer knew precisely how to motivate a 37-year-old to endure another six-mile conditioning run.
“My trainer kept saying, ‘Junior Seau is playing,‘.” Horry said after completing a vigorous training camp session, which lasted more than two hours, at the Spurs’ practice facility. “He used that as a motivational tool this summer to get me ready.”
Seau is a 38-year-old linebacker four games into the 2007 NFL season with the New England Patriots. It is his 18th pro season.
Relatively speaking, Horry, two days into his 16th training camp, is a youngster.
“People look at age and automatically cut you down,” Horry said. “But you look at all the guys over 40 playing sports. That was my motivation this summer.
“As long as Junior can go, I can go.”
Horry made it clear during the playoff run that produced the Spurs’ fourth NBA title in June that he intended this season to be his last. It does not seem likely, then, he will be playing at age 38, like Seau.
He hinted to having second thoughts about hanging up his jersey at season’s end — “I have to leave the door open” — but the truth is the door is barely ajar.
Horry struggled at times last season.
He averaged only 3.9 points, a career low, in 68 regular-season games. At midseason he admitted that on some nights he lacked the requisite energy to contribute at the level to which he had been accustomed. His coach, Gregg Popovich, often sat him in the second of back-to-back games.
His teammates retain full confidence in what Horry brings.
“It’s been his final season for the last five seasons,” joked guard Manu Ginobili. “But we all trust him so much that we know that sooner or later he’s going to do something that is really going to help us become a better team or go through a tough playoff game. He’s always done it. Even if last year he didn’t have a great regular season, he always contributes and gave us big shots against Denver (in a first-round playoff series) and big plays against Phoenix, too.”
Horry essentially won pivotal Game 3 against Denver when he made a late 3-point shot and then stole the ensuing in-bounds pass and made another 3-pointer.
Then came the Western Conference semifinals against the Suns and his infamous body check of MVP guard Steve Nash in the final seconds of Game 4. He was ejected, then suspended for the final two games of that series. The punishment, he acknowledged this week, affected him more than he cared to admit.
“That threw me off kilter, big-time,” Horry said. “I was surprised how much that threw me off my rhythm, because going in I had that good little rhythm from that Denver game. Then, all of a sudden you hit that little bump in the road, and it’s like I’m thrown for a big loop.”
He took only five 3-point shots in the four-game sweep of the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, but played his typically smart floor game.
“Probably against Utah and Cleveland, we didn’t need him as much,” Ginobili said. “It’s not that he didn’t perform. It’s just that we didn’t need him as before. So the way he plays and knows the game and with his shot, he’s always going to be useful.”
Horry does not want his final season to turn into some sort of “Big Shot Rob” farewell tour. Rather, he will approach it like his very first NBA season, when he established himself as a valuable member of a Houston Rockets team that would win NBA titles in his second and third professional seasons.
To that end, he has exchanged the No. 5 jersey he wore in his first four seasons with the Spurs for No. 25, a nod to the early days of his career.
“I’m trying to recapture my youth,” he said. “I wore 25 when I first came in the league, so I figured if this is my last year, I’ll wear 25 on the outside and see if No. 25 will put some new life and energy inside me.”