OdomFan wrote:dhsilv2 wrote:OdomFan wrote:This is more false than Horry deserving a spot in the HOF. He was a decent teammate but just doesn't belong among the best of the best.
if you care about points per game and not impact on the basketball court, to be honest I don't think you're one I want to discuss basketball with.
As for Horry, i think the best question about the hall should be a simple one. Can you tell the story of the NBA without this player, and to be honest Horry absolutely is a story that should be remembered. I can name a LOT of players from his era or around it who are in, who frankly that isn't the case. The hall isn't the hall of great players nor is it the hall of points per game. hell it isn't even the nba hall of fame.
There is no one or the other because points per game is just as important in making an impact on the court as everything else that the individual players contribute for their teams chances of winning every single game they play in. However not every player that the coach puts on the floor has to focus on putting up large numbers in that category which is fine.
This is why each player is assigned roles to primarily focus on in order to make that impact in each games final outcome. With that being said, everything you have about Robert Horry here pretty much sums up why I look at him as a memorable role player. He did his part for the team on both ends of the floor well (otherwise he wouldn't have made it into the league at all) but so has everyone else that gets consistent minutes for the teams they play for. This is all well and good but it doesn't mean they all deserve spots in the Basketball Hall of Famer.
Well I get that you see role player as a weird catch all for everyone from an actual role player to superstar impact guys, so I'm not sure how to really discuss that term as you're using is to include 99% of the league. But with that said we can discuss what Horry was.
Horry was a top 20 defender for about a decade straight.
He was revolutionary in his ability to be a stretch 4 before that was a thing.
He increased his production consistently in the playoffs every single year.
Horry spent the majority of his career as a guy who was a top 20-30 player in the league and simply never got credit for how good he really was.
That said top 20-30 undervalues how important he was to his teams. Guys who can increase production when needed, fill in slots, and defend 3 positions (in his era) are vastly more valuable than most allstars would have been in his place on those teams. horry defines scalable skills. This is why his impact was star level over his career and why he was able to reshape the entire nba and how the game is played. The rockets don't win with say a one time allstar in Charles Oakley in Horry's place. The lakers aren't winning with say Antonio Davis instead of Horry. And we can come up with a similar comp on the spurs.
Now if the hall were limited to actual super stars then perhaps we should change it. But I'll put Horry in the Hall before say Mitch Richmond everyday of the week. Horry was just more scalable, adaptable, and more useful on far more teams.