Cheap Shot Bob finally got to play again. And according to this ESPN article, he also got a standing ovation when he checked in. The Spurs can spin it any way they like. Their theory is the fans were just happy to have him back. Uh, yeah...ok. You're happy to have a guy back who scores something like 6 points a game? But the rest of the nation knows why the Spurs fans cheered. Because if it weren't for Cheap Shot Bob, they would be watching the Suns play the Jazz in the next round.
I thought I was over this. And then I read the article where Horry is actually proud of what he did. He says it is just playoff basketball. A hard foul in the middle of a hard fought game? Yeah, that's playoff basketball. A cheap shot to the star of the other team where you knock the guy into the scorer's table when the game is already over? Not a playoff foul. That's just being cheap.
And Horry actually admits this at the end of the article:
"I'd fall down this time and make it look like I'm trying to take a charge," he said. "I've got to look like I'm trying to get ready to take a charge and fall down. Then everybody would be like, 'Oh, he got knocked down, too.'"
Hey, Cheap Shot, if you would have tried to take a charge everything would have been ok. It wasn't the foul that caused the problem. It was the type of foul when the game was already over.
And no matter what any of the Spurs fans and players say about the role Cheap Shot played in the series, the standing ovation that Horry got when he checked into the game showed me everything I needed to know - they also know that without that foul, the Suns would have been playing the Jazz.