The Robert Horry Theory

With the NBA regular season ending yesterday, the playoff matchups are set, and it's time to get down to the business of picking my winners...

...soon. Like tomorrow.

But first of all, a little expose on one of my (and Matt's) favorite NBA players: Robert Horry. Now, any regular person (non-NBA fan) or even only a casual NBA fan may not know who Robert Horry is. Here's a quick run-down of the important stuff.

Horry was drafted in '92 by the Houston Rockets with the 11th pick, and won championships with the Rockets' teams lead by Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994 and 1995. After a short-stop in Phoenix due to Houston's trading for Charles Barkley, Horry ended up on the Los Angeles Lakers in 1997. In his time with the Lakers, Horry won three more championships, in 2000, 2001, and 2002. After becoming a free-agent in 2003, Horry signed with the San Antonio Spurs, and won two more championships in 2005 and 2007. And that brings us up to the present, with Horry battling age and injury to help the Spurs attempt to win a second straight championship.

If you were counting, you would know that all together, Robert Horry has won 7 NBA championships. Seven. Now those who are not avid basketball fans may be like, "well what's so special about that." Here's a hint. Almost everybody in the world knows who Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson are. These three basketball legends of the mid-late 80's are considered in some circles to be the three greatest NBA players ever, but almost everyone in the NBA community acknowledges them as top 10 players. Yet, Robert Horry has won more championships than all of them (Jordan - 6, Magic - 5, Bird - 3). In fact, Robert Horry has won more championships than any player who did not play on the 1960's Celtics who won 11 championships in 13 years.

If that were not enough to amaze you, here are a list of facts supporting my Robert Horry Theory.

-Every single time a team with Robert Horry on it has made it to the NBA Finals, they have won the championship.
-Every single team that once had Robert Horry on it has yet to win a championship since losing Robert Horry (either via trade or free agency).
-Only members of the 1960's Celtics have more championships than Robert Horry, but the 1960's Celtics are the only teams to have players with a better record in the NBA Finals than Robert Horry (Horry is 7-0).

As such, the theory can be stated as such:

-If a team reaches the Finals and that team has Robert Horry, then that team will win the championship.

Notice that is different from, "if a team has Robert Horry, the team will win the finals." Notable exceptions to that case were in 2003 when the Horry's Lakers lost to the Spurs in the conference semifinals, and in 2006 when the Horry's Spurs lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the second round. Yet, because both of these losses were before the Finals, they do not conflict with the Robert Horry Theory as I have stated it.

Many people simply like to say that Robert Horry was just lucky. However, Horry had a notable number of game-winning shots on the road to winning many of his teams championships. These can be seen here. To commemorate one of these occasions, the band "Grand Incredible" wrote a song dedicated to Robert Horry's game-winning shot over the Sacramento Kings in the 2002 Western Conference Finals, seen below.

Tomorrow I'll probably write about my predictions, with the NBA Playoffs beginning on Saturday.