Every NBA team’s greatest enforcer of all time

By Luke Anton | Feb 23, 2022

LOS ANGELES - 1987: Bill Laimbeer #40 of the Detroit Pistons looks on during a game against the Los Angeles Lakers at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles, California in the 1987-1988 NBA season. (Photo by Rick Stewart/Getty Images) /

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Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images /

Orlando Magic — Horace Grant

Don’t let the goggles fool you, Horace Grant was a battering ram. He was the odd man out in Chicago, taking a back seat to Michael and Scottie, but he got to exact his revenge on the Bulls in 1995 while on the Magic when MJ first returned from his baseball hiatus.

Those Magic teams were led by Shaq and Penny, so Grant was again the third banana, but he accepted his larger role as the team’s enforcer. Nicknamed The General and The Enforcer (!!), Grant wore his signature goggles for vision problems at first (he was legally blind), but after Lasik surgery, he kept wearing them to help make it cool for kids who had to wear glasses.

Grant played seven years for the Magic in all. He later teamed up with Shaq again — and Phil Jackson, too — winning his fourth championship with the Lakers in 2001.

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