Robert Horry has been discussing his NBA career a lot throughout these past couple days. With the NBA Finals and the Clutch City documentary being released, Robert Horry has been getting a lot of attention lately, and he has had some interesting opinions. First he said he hated playing for the Lakers, and now he is claiming that Rudy Tomjanovich is a better NBA coach than Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich.
According to Ananth Pandian of CBSSports, Horry claims:
“The polar opposite of that was my relationship with Rudy T. He understood that even though he was the coach, we could see things that he couldn’t see from the bench. We could hear things and feel things on the court that he couldn’t see. First thing T would say was, “What’s going on out there?” He would ask us the plays we would want to run sometimes and get a feel for what we were comfortable with.
If we ran a play and it worked, T would tell us to run it again. Phil not so much. Same with Pop. They are both great in their own right, but based on personal experience, T was the greatest NBA coach. I know he doesn’t have nearly as many championships, but sometimes we give one person too much credit for titles.”
Horry obviously isn’t saying that Phil and Gregg are bad coaches, in fact he is saying the opposite. They were good hard-headed coaches. The only reason Horry liked Rudy T more was his ability to integrate players more into decision-making, and that could be a big factor in any players relationship with a coach. Rudy T was the Houston Rockets head coach when Horry and ‘Clutch City’ won 2 NBA titles in a row. Horry later on went to win rings with the Lakers and Spurs, hence his relationship with both Jackson and Popovich.
Many have been asked to compare between coaches like Gregg Popovich, Phil Jackson, Rudy T, John Wooden, Red, but at the end of the day it all comes with perspective… and rings.
