There's no telling how good the Los Angeles Lakers will be after the Utah Jazz traded Walker Kessler to them. However, by proxy of who Kessler now plays for, a familiar and well-known enemy of Anny Ainge has now changed his tune on the ex-Jazz center because of the trade: Robert Horry.
In an exclusive interview with Laker Nation's Corey Hansford, Horry admitted that he will now have to root for Kessler now that he has joined the team Horry won three consecutive titles with.
"My heart says I can’t root for Walker Kessler because he went to Auburn, but now I have to (laughs),” Horry told Hansford. “But it’s gonna be interesting. Walker Kessler is a guy they’ve been coveting for a while and you think about all the pieces that they added."
For more context, Horry's alma mater is Alabama, whose sworn rival is Auburn, so it makes sense that Horry had some prior issues with the Jazz alum.
But now everything changes with Kessler joining one of Horry's NBA alma maters. It's also funny knowing Ainge's role in how Horry's career turned out and where Kessler currently is.
Horry & Ainge have been rivals for decades
While the Lakers and Jazz have been rivals at various points, that impressively hasn't involved Horry and Ainge's rivalry, though Utah was responsible for two consecutive humiliating defeats for L.A. at the beginning of the Shaq-Kobe era, during which Horry played for the Lakers.
However, Ainge and Horry were rivals during the epic playoff rivalry between Phoenix and Houston in the 1990s. However, Horry entered the NBA just as Ainge's career was about to end. When Ainge's time as a player was up, his first job post-playing was as a coach in Phoenix, who had just acquired in a blockbuster package for Charles Barkley.
Horry was not in Phoenix for long, though, as he and Ainge clashed right in the middle ot their rebuild, much of it because of their history of playing against each other. It got so bad that Horry infamously threw a towel at Ainge right in the middle of the game in 1997.
He never suited up for the Suns after that.
Instead, Horry went to the Lakers, where he played key role in their threepeat in the early 2000s.
There have been no indications that the two have made up since then. Hence, it's funny to see that Ainge's actions both then and now have connected almost 30 years later.
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