In the 25th anniversary year of the most recent Houston Rockets championship, former “Clutch City” forward Robert Horry still doesn’t think one of his 1994-95 teammates gets the credit that he deserves.
In an interview with broadcaster Craig Ackerman on the team’s official Facebook page, Horry was asked about his recollections of their improbable second NBA title run as a No. 6 seed in the 1995 playoffs.
While legendary center Hakeem Olajuwon understandably gets much of the credit for that run, Horry says fellow Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler — who began his NBA career with Portland — shouldn’t be forgotten. Then 32 years old, Drexler was acquired by Houston in a February 1995 trade.
Though the 6-foot-7 guard was recently highlighted on ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary as being outplayed by Chicago’s Michael Jordan in the 1992 NBA Finals, Horry says that shouldn’t define his legacy.
“People are always going to talk about the things that Dream did,” Horry told Ackerman. “But if you go back and look at some of the things that Clyde did? I was like, ‘Wow!’ I looked at the one game where they both had 40+ points. Clyde carried us a lot of times.”
Horry continued his comments:
I tell people all the time, ‘You want to look at a really phenomenal athlete? Look at Clyde Drexler.’ Nobody talks about him. The only time he gets talked about now is ‘Oh, Jordan ate him up. I say, ‘Yeah, but you never show the points he had against Jordan.’ Of course if I show you the highlights of me, I’m going to look like I killed you, because I won’t show any highlights of you. It’s one of those things that people don’t talk about much, but he’s probably one of the top five all-time best guards to ever play this game.
To play with him and have him on that run and help him win his first championship, that was incredible.
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Drexler, who also played with Olajuwon at the University of Houston, averaged 20.5 points (48.1% FG), 7.0 rebounds, and 5.0 assists per game as the second-leading scorer on the Rockets in the 1995 playoffs.
Over his 15-year NBA career, “The Glide” averaged 21.3 points (47.2% FG), 6.4 rebounds, and 5.9 assists per game, all while grading out as a good defensive player as well. Drexler retired in 1998, and he still occasionally serves as a television broadcast analyst for the Rockets.
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