She awoke after midnight and saw a light was on somewhere in the house. She could hear the soft schussing sounds and smell the Murphy's Oil soap. Stacy Hornacek knew right off: Mr. Mom was at it again, mopping the hardwood floors in the dead of night.
In his day job, her husband, Jazz guard Jeff Hornacek, makes an average of $2 million a year playing basketball. At night he mops floors and cleans house while his wife sleeps the peaceful sleep of one who knows nary a brown spider would dare try slipping into her home. Mr. Mom is watching.Is this the enlightened 90s or what?
"Don't believe anything she says about me," Hornacek laughs. "She's just trying to make me look good."
Certainly Hornacek would look good to almost anyone this side of June Cleaver. On his nights off, Hornacek bathes their two children - they're expecting their third any day - reads them a story and puts them to bed. When Stacy, worn down by months of pregnancy, rests during the day, Jeff cooks dinner and does the dishes.
But there is more to being Mr. Mom than just scrubbing floors and cooking dinners. There are the boys who need to be entertained, as well as cared for. Hornacek has been known to let them smash pies in one another's face - just like on their favorite Nickelodeon show - then clean them up afterward. Last year when Nickelodeon came to Philadelphia on tour, Hornacek went on stage just so his oldest son, Ryan, could squash one into his face.
"I think everyone enjoyed it," he says.
This is a guy who has no problem slipping from basketball star to the Big Bad Monster on cue. He plays with the kids on the living room floor after dinner and chases them through the house. He takes them onto the basketball court and lets them shoot while he does the post-game shows.
In Philadelphia, Hornacek participated in the neighborhood preschool car pool. When time allowed, he would don an apron and make a mess painting with the students. That's when the neighbors started calling him "Mr. Mom."
"Jeff is just a very normal person," says Stacy. "To him, being a father is more important than playing basketball."
Actually, Hornacek is a far distance from what most would consider "normal" NBA star behavior. He doesn't watch video movies all day at home or sleep until noon. He rises about 7 and gets the kids' breakfast. Most players indulge in hobbies or drive their new cars; Hornacek washes the dishes and runs errands.
When they lived in Phoenix, he routinely mowed the lawn on game days, prompting then-coach Cotton Fitzsimmons to urge him to hire a neighborhood kid. "Heck, I've been doing that since I was eight years old," Hornacek told one writer. "Why change?" The son of a suburban Chicago high school basketball coach, Hornacek never gave much thought to living anything but an everyday, middle-class life in the first place. There would be sports and part-time jobs and then college and a full-time job and a family. He didn't entertain grand plans of big homes and first-class vacations. And certainly there were no serious dreams of playing basketball and getting paid.
"The guys I grew up with, basketball was not our top priority," he says. "I wasn't a gym rat. We were more hockey-oriented and were doing that all the time. We played basketball and baseball, too, but we weren't always hanging out in the gym."
Nevertheless, in junior high Hornacek was already building the foundation for an NBA career, learning the fundamentals from his father. Those skills helped him outplay most of the kids his age. But in high school, he wasn't even the best player on his team until midway through his senior season.
"All of a sudden there were guys a lot bigger in high school. I could get by skill-wise, but when we got older, they had caught up with the skills advantage I had," he says.
It took a minor traffic accident by his best friend, Bob "Bobby T" Hauch, for Hornacek to even earn a starting spot on the varsity as a junior. Bobby T had fatefully driven away from campus during lunch hour, violating school policy, and was suspended after the accident was discovered.
"That's when I got the chance to play," Hornacek says.
Despite a respectable career at Lyons Township High in LaGrange, Ill., Hornacek wasn't exactly snowed under by recruiting offers. No Division I school offered him a scholarship. He looked at going to Cornell - an Ivy League school with no athletic scholarships - but decided instead to work the first semester out of high school. He spent several months toiling in a Sweetheart paper cup factory, rolling out paper and loading machines.
"It was a peon job," says Hornacek. "I saw it as a temporary job. But I had to do something to make some money."
Eventually, he found his way to Iowa State, where the coaches encouraged him to walk on. He had to pay for his first semester's tuition, but made the team after that, earning an athletic scholarship.
"Honestly," he told HOOP magazine, "I didn't know where Iowa State was. I just got in a car and went."
At college Hornacek got what he considers the biggest break of his life - meeting Stacy. The athletes ate meals in a dorm building where Stacy lived. One day they struck up a conversation, and shortly after, Hornacek called her for a date.
"I said no," she says. "It was six o'clock at night and I told him it was too short notice. But I didn't realize how shy he was."
The next day Hornacek waited outside her dorm until she came out during lunch hour, then asked her out for the evening. This time there was a full seven hours lead time, so she accepted.
The original plan was to go to a movie, but they ended up playing backgammon until the wee hours of the morning. "He opened the car door. He was so polite and considerate. He did all those things that nobody did in college at that time. I kept thinking he was too good to be true," says Stacy.
Though she immediately liked the modest young man with the courtly manners, Stacy didn't know he was a basketball player until two months after they had been dating. The news slipped out by accident one night when he showed up at 10:30 for an 8 o'clock date.
"I was mad because I thought he'd stood me up," she says.
When Hornacek finally arrived, he had on red-and-gold clothes - Iowa State's colors - and began apologizing for his tardiness. Asked what he had been doing, he told her he'd been speaking at a social function that had run late.
"I said, `What would you be speaking to a group for?' " she says. "He told me he played on the basketball team."
"Are you any good?" she asked.
"I'm OK," he said.
"Do you start?"
"Sometimes."
Stacy wasn't the only person wondering if Hornacek was too good to be true. As a college player, he began getting serious about basketball for the first time, and his coaches took notice. He worked constantly on the various aspects of his game, practicing his timing, studying the angles on his passes, repeating his shots.
"Once I got in college, I started really working for a purpose," he says.
A National Honor Society scholar in high school, Hornacek graduated from ISU with an accounting degree. Meanwhile, he set a Big Eight record for assists in a season (337) and is one of only three players in conference history to have over 1,000 points and 600 assists in his career. He was an Honorable Mention Associated Press All-America.
Drafted by Phoenix in the second round (46th overall) in 1986, Hornacek played backup point guard for two seasons. When Fitzsimmons was named head coach, he moved Hornacek to shooting guard and put Kevin Johnson at the point. Quickly the Suns became a contender, winning 55 games.
Playing regularly, Hornacek grew into one of the one of the best shooting guards in the game. Though one newspaper poll rated him the most underrated player in the league, Hornacek finally began drawing attention when he was named to the All-Star team in 1992. He was traded to Philadelphia the following summer in the deal that sent Charles Barkley to the Suns. Last February he came to Utah in a trade that sent Jeff Malone to the Sixers.
"Seemed like a good match," says Hornacek.
Having played in three cities and made one All-Star team, Hornacek's ability to go incognito is steadily evaporating. However, he can still walk through most eastern airports undetected. With his permanent schoolboy looks, the relatively short (6-foot-4) stature and his jeans-and-tennis-shoes wardrobe, he still conjures images of a student heading home for a long weekend.
Fitzsimmons delighted in telling Hornacek he looked like his paper boy.
"This paper boy is going to put one through your window," Hornacek would respond.
In Philadelphia, Hornacek made the best of a bad situation. He arrived for the games, played better than anyone else on his team, and went home to his family. Things worsened last summer when he was caught in a contract dispute with the Sixers. Reports said Hornacek wanted an $8 million balloon payment at the end of his contract that would pull his average up to about what other top shooting guards make. When no agreement was reached last summer, he held out of training camp but gave in and played once the regular season began.
Soon it became obvious the Sixers weren't going to rework Hornacek's contract, and that they were looking to pick up first-round draft choices to build around 7-foot-6 rookie Shawn Bradley. Hence, Hornacek became expendable. In the Hornacek-Malone trade, the Jazz also gave up this year's first-round draft pick.
Since joining the Jazz, Hornacek has averaged 13.5 points and 3.7 assists a game - a considerable accomplishment considering he still doesn't know the tendencies of all his teammates or the nuances of the Jazz offense.
"I think a lot of his game is instinctive," says Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. "He just plays the game, all the aspects. He does the little things. There's not just one aspect he can do. Those abilities make it a lot easier to adjust to a new team."
His .876 free throw percentage is among the top 10 in the NBA this year.
Horacek says he is happy in his new home, playing on a team with a chance to contend. They live in the Cottonwood area, a 3-point shot away from teammate John Stockton. Stacy describes Salt Lake City as "a rare place, these days, a place with strong values."
Safely away from the despair of Philadelphia - both the team and the city - they are back in the the West, where they say they feel at comfortable. (Both Midwesterners, they say they could easily live there, too; Hornacek thought he would end up playing for Chicago when trade rumors arose in February.)
In Salt Lake, Hornacek is finding things are simplified. He can drive the family around without anyone holding them up at stop lights to extort $2 for washing the windows. They can go bowling, miniature golfing, attend movies and hike, all within a few minutes' drive. "This is a special time in their lives. Basketball is great, but your family is still your No. 1 priority," he says.
Consequently, Hornacek is often in a hurry after practice. Outside in the spring air, Stacy waits patiently in the car with the kids. There are kites to fly and snow cones to slurp and games to play. It not so different than if he were just getting off the graveyard shift at the paper cup factory.
Hornacek says he could be happy with what he has - his wife, his kids, his principles - even if he were still working at the factory. "As long as I had enough money to put food on the table and buy clothes for the kids, I'd be fine," he says.
Because even then, there would still be bedtime stories to read and pies to smash and floors to mop. And even then Stacy could look at him and wonder if he's really too good to be true.