Horry Can’t Hide in the Corner Now

He is on a team with arguably the two best players in the league, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. That’s fine with Robert Horry because he shuns the spotlight the way he does defenders.

Many players say they don’t want acclaim, but Horry means it.

Over the years, he has passed up opportunity after opportunity to pad his statistics, to put up big numbers in the column that draws the most attention: points scored.

Yet this week, even Horry’s shifty moves haven’t been good enough for him to avoid the glare of that spotlight. Everybody in the media, it seems, wants a piece of him.

And all because of one bottom-of-the-net, 22-foot three-point shot from the corner.

But that’s the price Horry has had to pay for sinking the game-winning, series-clinching shot against the Portland Trail Blazers last Sunday.

With six days off until the start of the next series, what else was there to talk about?

So Horry’s teammates and coach have talked about him over and over.

“He wears suits to the game now,” said Rick Fox of playoff time, Horry’s time to shine in the league. “Rob’s as fragile [physically] as they come, so he doesn’t really leave it out there for the first 60 games of the season. But we put the fear into him in practice, which allows him to go out there [in the playoffs] fearless.”

Coach Phil Jackson said Horry’s tendency to perform at his peak at the peak time of the season is by design.

“He’s been a safety net for us,” Jackson said. “When we need him, we use him. When we don’t need him, we save him. He’s content to let other people score. He doesn’t have that big thrill, that lust to do so, that others have.”

So it didn’t surprise Jackson that Horry sank the biggest shot thus far for the Lakers in the playoffs?

“I expect it,” Jackson said.

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Power forward Samaki Walker, suffering from a bone bruise in his left knee, is expected to play when the Lakers begin their second-round playoff series Sunday at Staples Center.

“He’s not going to be 100% for a while, but we’ll take what we can get,” Jackson said.

Walker injured the knee two weeks ago when he collided with teammate Mark Madsen in practice.

Walker played limited time in the Portland series.

His biggest problem is stiffness after sitting on the bench.

The Lakers’ biggest problem is that, with Walker on the bench, their rebounding suffers.