Three — for-all?

Sporting News, The, June 25, 2001 by Sean Deveney

Shaquille O'Neal And Kobe Bryant alone give the Lakers an excellent chance to win a third straight title, but the team faces hard decisions on some of its spare parts

There was a time when Robert Horry was unwanted. Folks in Houston saw him as talented but lazy and uninspired. The Rockets tried to trade him in 1994 to the Pistons, a deal that was quashed by Sean Elliott's kidney condition.

Two seasons later, Houston finally sent Horry to Phoenix as part of the Charles Barkley trade, and it did not take long for Horry to make himself unwanted again. He did not like the trade. He did not like Suns coach Danny Ainge, who was trying in vain to get his team to learn the triangle offense.

He did not like seeing his scoring average drop from 12.0 to 6.9. He did not like the fact the Suns were 10-19. And Horry did not like much of anything when Ainge sent in Rex Chapman to replace him with the Suns down, 91-84, in a January game against Boston.

So Horry vented. He hollered. He threw a towel at Ainge. He got suspended. Four days later, on January 10, 1997, Horry was traded to the Lakers for Cedric Ceballos.

Pretty smart.

"The Suns would have released me, I think, but they were lucky," Horry says. "The Lakers had a crazy cat they wanted to get rid of, too. They swapped problems, me for Cedric. Who do you think made out on the deal?"

In hindsight, it has been the Lakers who have made out on almost every deal they've pulled off in the past five years (even Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell for Glen Rice eventually brought home a rifle). Coax doddering guards Ron Harper and Brian Shaw out of retiring? Sure. Trade Nick Van Exel for Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue? Sounds good, even if it was addition by subtraction. Throw wads of free-agent money at undersized, poor-shooting point guard Derek Fisher? Yup. Trade Vlade Divac for a high school kid with a funny name? Why not?

The Lakers may have whipped the pesky 76ers in five games in the NBA Finals, and they may be the league's sixth-highest paid team at just under $60 million, yet most of their roster is made up of rag-tag reclamation types like Horry. Of course, the two mainstays of the purple-and-gold, Kobe Bryant, 22, and Finals MVP Shaquille O'Neal, 29, are NBA royalty. The rest, though, have been pulled off the league scrap heap.

"People look at our team, and you've got guys like me, Shaw and Fish going out there and putting 3s on you," Horry says. "That's what kills them. Look at Shaw. He looks like a nice guy. But, man, he can kill you and you don't even notice it."

O'Neal, on the other hand, is plenty noticeable. Even with four-time Defensive Player of the Year Dikembe Mutombo playing with an elbow affixed to O'Neal's kidney area for the entire series, there was little stopping the Lakers center. He has developed into the perfect axis on which the triangle offense can rotate, as a scorer or a passer. Play him one-on-one, even if you have Mutombo, and he will brutalize your center. Double-team and he flips passes to guys like Shaw and Horry for wide-open 3-pointers. The 76ers' Allen Iverson's advice on guarding O'Neal: "Pray." Sixers president Pat Croce goes a step further: "Make it a novena."

As devastating as O'Neal was against the 76ers--he averaged 33 points, 15.8 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 3.4 blocks in The Finals--it was Shaw, Horry and the scrap-heap gang who delivered consistent, killer blows. In Game 2, it was Fisher hitting a 3-pointer with 2:08 to play, O'Neal on the bench with five fouls and the 76ers within three points. In Game 3, it was Horry's 3-pointer with the Lakers leading by one and 47 seconds to play. In Game 4, a 3-pointer by Shaw stopped an 11-0 Sixers run in the fourth quarter and sent the Lakers on an 11-1 run of their own. And Game 5 was sealed by Fisher's 3-pointer with 51 seconds left and the 76ers having cut a 19-point lead to seven. The Lakers shot 48 percent on 3-pointers in the series, including 22-for-36 (61.1 percent) in Games 4 and 5, thanks mostly to their troupe of castoffs.

But heading into the offseason, as many as five pieces of that scrap-heap gang could be elsewhere next season, which is the beauty of the Lakers' setup. It almost guarantees a long championship reign. Horry, Harper, Horace Grant and Lue can be free agents. Shaw's contract is not guaranteed unless he still is with the team in December. But even if all five leave, you have to like the chances that the Lakers, who dosed the season with a 23-1 run, will make it three straight titles. The team has a simple model every NBA team would like to follow: Get two great players, preferably the two best in the league, and just plug the gaps around them.

"The key is that with (O'Neal and Bryant), we have a window here to build a championship every year," says Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak, who this season took over personnel decisions from retired team president Jerry West. "That window may be there for six or seven more years. So we always have to be thinking in terms of winning this year. We'll do whatever it takes as long as the window is there."