Hornacek made his name as the best pure shooter in then NBA. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who preaches defense and rebounding above all else, once noted, "He's one of the guys that when he's open from 15 to 18 feet you almost feel like you don't have to go to the basket (to rebound) . . . If I were a player, and I was having a problem shooting, I'd rent a place at his house."

Layden once said of Hornacek, "Above all, he can stroke it."

It wasn't always that way. When he first entered the NBA, Hornacek had what was essentially a two-handed shot. He used the thumb of the left hand as a sort of guide, which put a strange side spin on the ball, and his shooting was always erratic. He resisted his father's attempts to correct his shot, but, as was the case throughout his career, help came in an unlikeliest way. His coaches didn't fix his shot; his wife did.

Following his rookie season, Hornacek made daily trips to the gym to practice his shooting, often with Stacy rebounding. He tried everything to correct his shot, including taping his left thumb to his hand. One day Stacy grew weary of chasing his missed shots and stepped back to observe. Why don't you point at the basket after you release the ball, she suggested. You can imagine what Hornacek thought. Great, now the wife's telling me how to shoot. But he tried it, and it worked. Hornacek says Stacy had the biggest influence on his shot. His shooting accuracy improved from 45.4 percent in his rookie season to 50.6 a year later. He has been a 50 percent shooter ever since.

It isn't just that Hornacek could shoot accurately that raised eyebrows; it's that he could do it from so many angles and in so many ways — falling away, leaning, looking the other way, over 7-footers, under 7-footers, half-hooks, running jumpers, underhand, overhand, whatever — and all of them with the quickest release in the NBA. When necessary, he actually shots the ball at the same time he was catching it. It's as if Hornacek has a microchip in his brain, which, in a split second, calculates distance, angle, body lean, trajectory needed to clear a defender's hands, precise ETA of the in-coming defender and the latest possible launch time allowable to beat the block. He sees things in slow motion, which allowed him to pick apart defenders and defenses. All of this compensated for any lack of jumping ability and speed. His shot was rarely blocked, even though he often ventured into the lane. The first time Hornacek faced Ralph Sampson, the 7-foot-4 sensation, he took the ball right at him twice and flipped the ball into the basket over Sampson's outstretched arms.

"He could shoot accurately in a windstorm," Chiesa likes to say.