Robert Horry never will be considered as great a player as Charles Barkley. But Horry says there's a reason the Houston Rockets won two titles with him and none with Barkley
Huffington Post reported that Horry, the seven-time NBA champion whom the Rockets traded before the 1996 season to the Phoenix Suns for Barkley, pointed at Barkley's work ethic - or lack of one - as the culprit in the team's inability to add a third trophy on a team that had Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.
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The Rockets won back-to-back championships in 1994-1995 but traded Horry, Sam Cassell, Chucky Brown and Mark Bryant to the Suns for Barkley and a 1999 second-round draft pick, according to Fansided.com.
"It's one of the things that me and Sam Cassell talk about all the time," Horry said, according to Huffington Post. "If they would have made the changes and bring in Kevin Willis and Eddie Johnson to that team adding to me and Sam, that's all we needed. Now they bring in Barkley, a guy who doesn't like to practice and a guy that doesn't work hard -- it's documented by Jordan. Now you would've added us to that mix with two vets; we would have had a great team. But, no, they think, 'Oh, we're going to bring in Charles,' and, hell, you just realize Charles didn't win anything in Phoenix -- he didn't win in Philly. And sometimes great players don't make a great team better."
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When asked whether he thought Barkley is not a winner, Horry defended Barkley.
"Naw, I won't say that," he said. "... Sometimes when you have too many chefs in the kitchen, think about it, you had Clyde, you had the Dream, you had Charles. Those were three scorers; you only had one basketball."
Bleacher Report agreed with Horry's assessment of the trade in 2010.
"So, was Houston's trade to pick up Sir Charles a stupid one?
"You bet; and if the Rockets hadn't made that trade, who knows how many more titles would have ended up in the best city in the Lone Star State."
Fansided called the trade the No. 3 worst trade in Rockets history in 2013 but with a caveat:
"This would be ranked as one of Houston's best trades if Barkley had been able to stay healthy and if John Stockton hadn't knocked down a dramatic game-winner in Game 6 of the 1997 Western Conference Finals."
Horry likely can get away with comments in the sphere of social commentary, thanks to his dominance over Barkley in NBA rings (7-0).
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