I'm torn - who was a better #11 overall pick: Reggie Miller or Robert Horry?
by grungedave on Jun 23, 2009 5:26 PM CDT
in Discussions about Badasses
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PrintIan Thomsen must have been bored of doing mock drafts, because this week he did an article ranking the best players to be taken at a particular spot in the NBA draft (Magic Johnson being the best overall pick ever...).
Now, it kills me that Olajuwon barely got mention in the "best #1 overall picks" discussion... somehow ranking behind the Fat Ass, but I digress. No, my concern today is about the #11 overall pick. Thomsen chooses Reggie Miller, who was drafted by the Indiana Pacers way back in 1987. Damn I feel old. But was Reggie Miller the best player ever chosen at this spot? I mean... he was great, and I am a huuuuuge Reggie fan, but this is what Mr. Thomsen said about it:
11. Reggie Miller, Pacers, 1987: This has been a good slot in which to acquire shooting: Allan Houston, Robert Horry and Kiki Vandeweghe were all No. 11 picks, as was Jamaal Wilkes. But none made a bigger impact on the team that drafted him than Miller, a clutch scorer who matured to set a standard of leadership for the Pacers.
Sure, yeah, go ahead and reduce Robert Horry into the Allan Houston/Kiki Vandeweghe category of "good shooters". I find that to be blasphemous. Do any of those guys have seven rings? I think not. Reggie Miller doesn't even have one ring. The one time Reggie did get to the Finals, Big Shot Rob was there to block him from the promised land. For his third ring. Of what would be seven. One for both ring fingers and both thumbs.
Man, I'm torn... who was a better pick there? Reggie Miller or Robert Horry. Both are future Hall-of-Famers, so it's not as easy as it may seem. And while I am obviously partial to anything Horry does, I gotta admit that the Indiana Pacers might not even exist today if not for Reggie Miller. So, championships or not, I think I gotta give him the edge here. He saved a franchise. That's something that not even Horry can say.
It isn't said enough... Reggie Miller was a badass.
For full disclosure... there are exactly two players whose jerseys I own that never played for the Rockets. One was Penny Hardaway (that guy was awesome until the knees gave out). The other is Reggie Miller. Of course, I own *two* Horry jerseys. I even own the Rockets' pajama jersey with Horry's #25. Not that I ever wear it.
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Sorry Dave
I love Horry, too, but I’ve got to go with Reggie, too. The whole “lead a franchise thing.” Could the Rockets/Lakers/Spurs still won in the Finals without Horry? Probably. Could the Pacers have even made the playoffs without Miller-time? Probably not.
How many Biletnikoffs does he have? NOT TWO!
um, no
"Could the Rockets/Lakers/Spurs still won in the Finals without Horry? Probably."
Actually, no. The only team Horry was on that might have won it without him were the 2007 Spurs. That’s it.
The ’05 Spurs needed two last second shots.
The ’02 Lakers needed the Game 4 miracle in L.A. against the Kings
The ’01 Lakers needed the big first round shots against Portland
The ’00 Lakers needed him to guard Duncan/Rasheed and the Davis brothers
The ’95 Rockets needed him badly
The ’94 Rockets needed him even more.
but yeah, Reggie saved a franchise. Reggie wins.
sometimes I have no idea whether or not we're supposed to take your posts seriously, dave.
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okay, that was sarcastic and stupid
but, I mean, you can’t seriously use “they needed a clutch shot in this game” as a case for “they couldn’t have won the game without him.” Maybe, had someone other than Horry played, those teams would never have needed a clutch shot. Maybe they’d have won in a blowout.
Specific plays just aren’t a good measure of a player’s contributions in a season, series, or even a single game.
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you must be kidding me
I think it’s well believed that the ‘02 Lakers simply DO NOT beat the Kings but for Horry’s shot in Game 4.
I also think it’s been very much established that the ‘05 Spurs DO NOT beat the Pistons without Horry’s heroics in Game 5… otherwise Detroit wins in 6.
and yes, specific plays CAN be a good measure. Sometimes they are the only measure between a win and a loss.
I'm with O_A_L on this one
You can’t put a franchise player on par with a role player, no matter how instrumental he is. Suppose you take a shooter as great as Miller (far superior to Horry), who also has ice water in his veins, and switch roles. Can Horry carry a franchise? Absolutely not. Can you reasonably imagine Miller, on those championship teams, hitting those buzzer beaters? Of course. In fact, I’d argue, with Miller on those teams you wouldn’t need those buzzer beaters because of his overall production.
Who knows what would have happened if Horry hadn’t been on those teams? Maybe they wouldn’t have needed buzzer beaters because a higher scoring or better rebounding 4 would have kept the game from being that close. It’s too hypothetical, too many what-ifs.
But Miller can do much, much more than Horry. Put Horry in Miller’s situation for his career, and I guarantee he wouldn’t have 7 rings. Team sports’ dependence on context makes straight individual comparisons difficult.
Well said
I think GD got spanked by Snoopy…
horry could make big shots
but I dont think anyone would argue that he could carry a team over a season like reggie did. And while clutchness is extremely important, its not a substitute for overall skill. And lets not forget, Miller had some HUGE clutch moments (against the knicks in particular)
I disagree.
Clutchness is what makes a player great. Without clutch plays, no one wins anything. Ever. Every NBA that has ever won a championship had clutch plays that were necessary to win, usually from a host of different players. In Robert Horry’s case he happens to be a player who can (and HAS) made those plays time and time again.
"I am from one of the top 15 cities in the world. Buffalo, New York." - TrentEdwardsHoF2018
I agree to an extent
Most great players are clutch players too. However, I don’t think disappearing the whole year, and then being clutch in the playoffs, or become missing during the whole game , and then being clutch in the last second, is enough to make someone great. That pretty much describes Robert Horry. The guy was average. He just happened to be blessed with many an opportunity to be a hero. I’ll say this again, but Robert Horry did nothing to create those situations.
you sell him short
Horry was the consummate team player. He did everything that never showed up in the box score. Some people mistook this for being lazy. But no, he set the hard screens… he took charges… he played amazingly good defense against the Karl Malones, Tim Duncans, Rasheed Wallaces and Chris Webbers of the league. That’s a murderer’s row of power forwards in the late 1990s/early 2000s. You cannot underestimate his role in the team defense.
No, he never scored a lot of points… though he did score 40 once.
No, he never averaged double figure rebounds… though he was never asked to.
No, he never blocked a lot of shots… but he was the first player in NBA history to record 100 blocked shots and 100 three-pointers in the same season. True story.
you guys are making me think that maybe Horry has become *under*rated in time.
I'm not saying he sucked
But he’s not even in Reggie Miller’s league
I vote Horry, because of the “clutchness” delineated above, and also inveterate homerism.
Hey, at least I’m honest.
inveterate homerism
He’s just a brotha taking shots that are there. And I do NOT think Horry is a HOF’er btw…may as well vote D. Fisher or R. Bowen to the HOF for their contributions. VERY important to their respective teams and I think Fish and Bowen were the push that got their teams over the humps but the best at their draft position? HOF’ers? No.
Reggie always played 100%
I’m a huge Rockets fan, and love Will Smith, errr Robert Horry, as a kid. He was clutch in the playoffs and played some seriously underrated D (Barkley and Malone should attest to) as well as some awesome Tomahawk jams in his younger days. But we traded him because despite his skill set, he took off huge chunks of the regular season.
And while he was the consummate role player, he was exactly that- a role player. Reggie Miller was the man on Indy. Hell he scored 8 pts in less than 9 seconds to win a playoff game against his rival Knicks.
And if it wasn’t for the fight in Detroit, he might just have that championship. Dude was a pure scorer (and poor man’s Clyde the Glide).
This post almost went to shit
I thought you were going to say Robert Horry was a better pick. Thank God you realized there is a difference between a role player and a franchise player.
As far as the shots are concerned, I think there are many players who could have made those shots as well. Someone may pose the question of why nobody else is known for making so many clutch shots? Well, it’s because it’s pure luck that he was in all of those situations. The situations he was in, you know big game with little time left, were all luck and coincidence. If someone wants to make the case that Robert Horry somehow used his basketball skill to create these last minute miracle situations to be a part of, be my guest.
I'll pose this instead
Name me two instances where Horry had a last second shot to win/tie a game and MISSED?
I ask for two because there is only one actual moment when he missed. Game 5 against the Spurs in 2003. That’s it. The shot rimmed out… and even Horry was looking at it like “what the hell? I never miss these…” because it was the first (and only) time he ever did.
and it’s not “luck” because he put himself in position to be ready to take these shots. Many people shy away from such moments. So, yeah, he used his high basketball IQ and “skill” to be in position when these moments presented themselves.
haha nice try....
“when these moments presented themselves…”
Exactly. He didn’t create those moments, which was my point entirely.
I’m stealing this from somebody, but I remember someone calling him Forrest Gump because he just happened to be in all these famous situations by chance.
I didn't say he sucked
He was a good role player. Nothing more, nothing less.
Good God Dave
It’s Reggie Miller by about 30 miles
I love Horry too, but that’s just insane
www.TheDreamShake.com Co-Founder and Writer
next up:
Who was a worse person, Karl Malone or Hitler?
Dave’s answer: probably Hitler, but Malone makes things closer than you’d think.
Your friendly neighborhood Dreamshake mod.
well, yeah...
I mean, I don’t recall Hitler being a rapist… who then knocks up his 13 year old victim and refuses to acknowledge his son until only after his son is drafted by the NFL.
from what I remember
he still hasn’t acknowledged him, actually.
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Hall of Fame
In case Dave makes it back to this post, I guarantee you neither of these guys will make the HOF, and definitely not Horry.
Have you noticed how impossibly hard it is to make it into the HOF now? Hollinger wrote a great piece about it last year ($):
http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=2822231&name=hollinger_john&action=upsell&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fespn%2fblog%2findex%3fentryID%3d2822231%26name%3dhollinger_john
John Salley
Grungedave,
When will you be starting a “John Salley for HOF” campaign based on is 4 rings?
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