SAN ANTONIO – The Spurs’ Robert Horry has the most championships of any active player – five. But the first one was among the sweetest. It came 11 years ago, when the Rockets beat the Knicks in seven violent games.

It was June 22, 1994 – the last time The Finals featured a Game 7 until tonight, when the Pistons and Spurs battle for the championship trophy at SBC Center.

“The only thing was different is you’re playing the Knicks,” Horry said yesterday. “Everyone in the world knows who the Knicks are, and it was just a grind-it-out thing and you enjoyed it. It was rough and tough. I especially enjoyed when it was over because I had a fractured butt, a sprained wrist, stitches.”

A fractured butt? It was an age when the Pat Riley Knicks played as if they meant it.

“I got taken out of the air by [Anthony] Mason,” Horry said. “It was just a foul back then. Now it would it would be a flagrant foul 2, and you’d be thrown out of the game. That’s when basketball was played hard.”

Horry, then in his second season, and Sam Cassell are the only active players still left from that game in which John Starks shot 2-of-18. Horry scored eight points, shot 4-of-8 with five boards in 35 minutes.

“I can’t remember anything but the joy it was over because I was beat up in that series,” said Horry, the hero of Game 5 Sunday, hitting a last-second overtime 3-pointer, cementing his legend as “Big Shot Bob.”

Spur teammate Brent Barry remembers being at Oregon State in 1994.

“I think I was studying for finals or attempting to,” Barry said.

Horry savors all five titles – two with Houston, three with the Lakers.

“Some of the most joyous occasions of your life,” he said. “I’ve never been in a situation in the Finals where I lost, and I don’t want to experience it.”