Robert Horry only had one off-court conversation with Phil Jackson as a Laker

It's often said that NBA championship teams must have great chemistry to succeed. Talent matters, of course, but there are few substitutes for player, coach, and management all getting along swimmingly. If every player takes his own cab on a road trip, there's a problem.

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That's the idea, anyway. Yet, if Robert Horry is to believed, an essential part of a championship roster can go four seasons and win three titles without speaking to his head coach more than one time when not on the court. In a new article for The Players' Tribune (via SLAM), Horry says he and Phil Jackson spoke all of one time during their four years together with the Los Angeles Lakers. And it's not as if the subject was unrelated to their jobs:

Whenever I hear people crying about Kobe yelling at people in practice, or wondering whether or not LeBron is best friends with his teammates, I just roll my eyes. You know how many off-court conversations I had with the Zen-Master Phil Jackson in my entire time with the Lakers? One. I was sitting in the trainer’s room getting treatment and he was sitting on the table across from me.

“What happened with you and Danny Ainge in Phoenix?” he asked.

“I didn’t like him, so I blew up and threw a towel at him. I didn’t handle it the right way.”

“Okay.”

And that was it. We won three titles together. Go figure.

Horry goes on to say that he and Houston Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich had a much closer working relationship and that he and Hakeem Olajuwon had a great understanding, so it's not as if the notion of chemistry is a lie. Rather, the issue seems to be that it's not necessary to a winner. A team can do fine without it, just as the Lakers did with Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryantas co-stars.

This is just one of several topics Horry covers in the article. He describes how the Lakers opted not to bring him back (poorly, it seems), the way his strong relationship with Olajuwon started (via a challenge), and the extent of Kobe's insane desire to win. It's a wide-ranging piece without a consistent through-line, but it's also pretty great.