After trying out for the D-League last fall, Horner was called up twice to the New Jersey Nets.
Springfield's Dennis Horner, driving past Canton's Luke Harangody Sunday at the MassMutual Center in Springfield, had a standout year for the Armor. SPRINGFIELD – The basketball gods did not wrap Dennis Horner in the mouth of a stork and drop him in the birthplace of basketball, ready to compete for an NBA roster spot. He was not a complete unknown to NBA decision-makers when he arrived at the D-League national tryout with the $650 tryout fee and a body 15 pounds stronger than scouts remembered.
But if you told Horner all he would accomplish this season – helping make professional basketball relevant in Springfield for the first time while earning two separate stints with the NBA’s New Jersey Nets – he would not have believed it.
“I would have looked at you like you were crazy,” the Springfield Armor forward said. “I was in Cyprus last season, as far off the radar as I could get.”
Horner’s story is not one of a meteoric rise from obscurity to the borderline of NBA fame, but the result of preparation colliding with opportunity. Though he returned to the United States after competing in professional leagues in Belgium and Cyprus last season, he was a highly recruited athlete out of high school who became a four-year contributor at N.C. State.
“We certainly knew who Dennis Horner was when he showed up at the national tryout in Louisville,” Armor coach Bob MacKinnon said. “He played in the ACC, a very good player who played at a high level and knew what it took to succeed. Fortunately, he was still available when we picked.”
Springfield selected Horner in the third round of the D-League draft on Nov. 3. Little more than a month later, he received an invitation to New Jersey Nets training camp with seemingly little chance to make the team.
A number of factors led to Horner sticking on the Nets’ opening-day roster and playing five early season games:
The Nets entered training camp with a severe shortage of power forwards. Even the late signings of Shelden Williams and Kris Humphries did not give New Jersey a deep front court.
The Armor’s new hybrid relationship with the Nets joined the two organizations at the hip. Springfield ran all the Nets’ sets, so Horner knew the offense before learning it in NBA training camp, and the two teams’ departments of basketball operations worked cohesively – MacKinnon and assistant coach Chris Carrawell were involved closely in the Nets training camp, sitting in on meetings and leading the players through drills.
“If you have three bosses, who do you serve?” MacKinnon said of the Armor’s three-pronged affiliation last season. “We have one boss now, one philosophy, one mission statement. It helps give our guys a better chance, and benefits the Nets as well.”
Last but not least, of course, Horner is a talent. The 6-foot-9, 230-pound forward bulked up before the season with two-a-day workouts and used the added girth to average 17 points and 8.5 rebounds in 25 regular-season games, shooting 47.3 percent from the field and 37.3 percent from behind the arc to lead Springfield to its first playoff berth and Eastern Conference regular season championship. He was called up to the Nets for a second time in March, appearing in eight games total for the season.
“He’s a little bit like Dennis Rodman in the way he keeps balls alive and chases after rebounds,” MacKinnon said. “But he’s also comparable to Ryan Anderson as a stretch four. He just understands the game and conceptually does a great job, always seems to know what he’s doing. I know Deron Williams loved playing with him in New Jersey.”
Added Armor teammate Jerry Smith, “I will always lace them up with Dennis Horner because of how hard he plays. That’s the first thing that sticks out. He’s going to give you everything he has for 48 minutes. If he’s on the floor he’s going all out. I can play with a guy like that any day of the week.”
With the Armor’s season complete after a 2-1 playoff series loss to the Canton Charge, Horner plans to return to South Jersey, where his family lives. He said the Nets have asked him to compete with the team’s summer league entry. He intends to gain another 10 or 15 pounds of “good weight,” continue refining his already potent outside shot and improve his mobility so he can ditch the dreaded “‘tweener” label.
Horner envisions becoming a power forward who can defend NBA bigs down low but still provide perimeter firepower, a role that has become en vogue with players such as Anderson, Dirk Nowitzki and the Celtics’ Brandon Bass.
The only Armor player to get called up to the NBA twice this season, Horner got a small taste of fulfilling his lifelong goal. He didn’t expect it would come this soon, but it certainly hit the spot.
“I’m the first guy ever to compete in the national D-League tryout and play in the NBA in the same season. If you look at my percentages of making the NBA this year, it was 1 percent or less,” Horner said. “I’ve come a great distance. Now that I’m on the radar, I just need to work that much harder.”