Lisa Guerrero, the fox at Fox, is standing near Robert Horry's locker, dressed in ornate bell-bottom jeans and some sort of long-sleeved, full-length sweater jacket. "You do know you're in San Antonio, right?" Horry says, referring to Guerrero's heavy gear in the broiling Texas heat.

The next day, yours truly meets the Horry family for an interview at the Lakers' San Antonio hotel. Horry scopes out an empty couch and chairs on a balcony as a place to talk. "But I don't know if you want to sit outside in those jeans," he says.

	With four rings, Horry is a prime time playoff player.

Which tell us two things about Robert Horry -- he has a discerning eye when it comes to clothes -- and anything else, for that matter -- and he cares about the comfort of others.

These two parts of his persona lead me to join him for a visit to his L.A.-based tailor, Ron Finley, following a two-hour photo shoot for The Magazine. The shoot is so long I get tired simply watching Horry pose a million only-subtly-different ways. Horry is unfailingly gracious, asking the photographer to demonstrate the pose he wanted so he could get it exactly right, shaking out his wrists without complaint after being asked to palm a basketball for nearly 20 minutes.

I already knew all this about him, having spent a week researching a story on him and all the tragedies and challenges he's faced in his 31 years, including two high-school friends dying in separate incidents and his daughter Ashlyn being born with a missing chromosome, leaving her severely handicapped. It was a pleasure to write about him even before he offers to drive me to meet his tailor.

The trip to Finley is necessary because Horry attended a recent event where a woman hugged him and, in doing so, inadvertently poured a glass of red wine down the back of his crème-colored shirt. He's bringing the shirt to Finley to see if he can get the stain out.

"I wasn't sure what it was at first," he says from behind the wheel of his silver Mercedes. "But I looked around and I knew what had happened by the look on everybody's face."

Finley's shop is one large room with sewing machines and haphazardly-stacked bolts of cloth and portable clothing racks bulging with various outfits. Some odd-looking bicycles hang from the ceiling along with more clothes. Finley and Horry are working on a design incorporating Horry's favorite number, 25, into a personal moniker to be stitched into his clothes. A monogram of sorts. They look over a half-dozen ideas sketched onto a piece of scrap paper before the conversation drifts to dinner plans and a movie.

Finley is genuinely puzzled when he can't find a pair of pants Horry has ordered. "They just got legs or something," he says. Looking around the shop, I'm amazed he can find anything.

The son of a staff sergeant and a schoolteacher, Horry is meticulous about what he wears. He does not mix and match, in part because he has a lot of monochromatic outfits, including shirts and pants made from the same cloth; in part because he looks, talks and walks exactly like Robert Horry Sr. The two sound so similar Robert Sr. is mistaken for his son answering the phone at Horry's Marina del Rey condo. A visit catches Robert Sr. about to go out on the town, dressed in black-on-black shirt and slacks.

Horry Sr. was a career military man, which means he knows his way around a uniform and wearing the appropriate gear for every condition. His son does, too. When packing for a Lakers trip, Horry will lay out his outfit for each day and coordinate it with the weather in each particular city, a tricky proposition on those Philly-Atlanta-Orlando-Memphis swings.

"I'm just glad the spill wasn't on one of my favorites," he says of the stained shirt.

Which tells us one more thing about Robert Horry -- he can find the bright side to just about anything.

Then again, he's had a lot of practice.

Ric Bucher covers the NBA for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at ric.bucher@espnmag.com.