CES 2012: Former Laker Robert Horry talks tech, basketball

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Like many celebrities, Robert Horry is at the Consumer Electronics Show this week to help promote a tech company. Problem is, when we sat down with him Tuesday to chat about Haier America, basketball’s Big Shot Rob conceded he hadn’t yet seen the appliance brand’s latest products.

In fact, he says he’s not much of a techie.

‘I try to keep my life as simple as possible,’ he said. ‘[If] I get all this high-tech, I’m going to buy more stuff and more stuff.’

No matter. The affable former Laker, who won three of his seven championships with the team, was happy to talk generally about the brand, which is a sponsor for the NBA, and his hopes for his partnership with the company: ‘Haier has a lot of good products, and I’m just trying to get in good with the family so they can remodel my kitchen,’ he joked.

He was also eager to chat about his basketball days, saying he still keeps in touch with Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher. Although he’s a Lakers fan, he said he sees challenges ahead for the team this year, including ‘a lot of young cats on their team,’ tough competition from the Oklahoma City Thunder and Miami Heat, and leftover issues from the trade drama at the start of the season.

‘I just think sometimes, with the way the season started out with them and all the turmoil and the guys being traded and them trading guys and trades not going through, you put a wall up as a player,’ he said. ‘Even though you go out there and play, it’s still not the same because in the back of your mind, you always got that fear of being traded, so you don’t play as well.’

These days, Horry works as a sports commentator and lives in Houston -- though he noted that ‘everybody thinks I live in L.A.’

‘L.A. is just too expensive for me,’ he said. ‘That’s one thing about me: I’m from the South and I’m cheap.’

Horry said he goes to a lot of Houston Rockets games now that he’s retired and has free time. ‘I try to keep my face in there just in case one day I want to try to venture into the coaching realm or the GM realm or something of that nature,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for my son to turn 13 and go to high school, and then I want to get back into it.’

But back to tech: Horry, who has attended CES a number of times in the past, said he loves coming to the show to see what new products are coming out. ‘My favorite part is going to booths and coming home with a bag of stuff,’ he said.

One device he won’t be going home with: a 3-D television.

‘I can’t watch 3-D. It gives me a headache,’ he said. ‘I just saw a guy with a 3-D camera and that was cool, but after looking at it for 2, 3 seconds, my head started to hurt.’

But Horry said he loves watching television shows -- ‘The Closer’ is a top choice -- and has three Apple TVs in his home. As expected, he said Haier’s TVs ‘are great.’ His favorite model?

‘The big ones,’ he said. ‘The thing about them is they’re slim and you can put them anywhere. Right now, I’m working on getting one to put in my bathroom. Sometimes you like to sit back and take a nice bubble bath and watch NBA TV.’

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-- Andrea Chang in Las Vegas