How Will You Remember Tracy McGrady?
In my first article, I cover the career of soon-to-be Hall of Fame career of Tracy McGrady, in more of a story type of fashion.
Tony Parker chewing up 23.999997 seconds of the shot clock before clinching Game 1 with an outrageous leaner. Spurs fans clogging downtown San Antonio after Game 5, relentlessly honking their horns and creating a ridiciolouus scene. LeBron’s headband getting symbolically knocked off in the second half of Game 6, right before he summoned his immense powers to save Miami’s season. Ray Allen making the single greatest shot I’ve ever seen in person to steal San Antonio’s championship away. Tim Duncan bent over in the last minute of Game 7, his hands pushing against his knees, totally distressed, unable to fathom how he missed a game-saving bunny that he’s probably made a million times.
Then, you could find T-Mac, Tracy McGrady, once considered the equal of Kobe Bryant … only now, he was crusting away as a benchwarmer for San Antonio. The role was so far beneath him, nobody even knew how to fully process it. McGrady had no impact on the series, but after doing research for this article, one T-Mac story really clinched me. About 75 minutes before Game 4 in San Antonio, Reggie Miller was standing on the court waiting for Duncan to warm up.
“Duncan only took shots that he plans on using in games. No joking around, no casual conversing, no stopping, no smiling. Just an aging artist honing his craft. It’s beautiful to watch. On this night, Duncan hadn’t emerged from the locker room yet. So I started watching McGrady — a future Hall of Famer like Duncan, only someone who had never even won a playoff series until he joined San Antonio in April. I was standing there wearing a suit and tie, my face covered in makeup. McGrady was wearing practice clothes, halfheartedly hoisting 3s with a half-smile spread across on his face. I knew he wasn’t playing that night unless they were up 20 or down 20. So did he. I knew his career had been over for a while. So did he. Only he kept jacking up those 3s, and he kept kind of smiling, and the moment meant nothing and everything.” He hadn’t resonated with NBA fans since the 2007–08 season, when a good-but-not-great Rockets team stunned everybody by ripping off 22 straight victories. If you want to remember that astonishing winning streak as T-Mac’s Last Stand, that’s fine. He bounced around like a T-Macimpostor for these past five years. First in New York, then Detroit, then Atlanta, then China, and finally San Antonio. The final third of his career meant absolutely nothing, completely wasted. Which is again, so T-Mac. Insane Talent, wasted in the plaoffs. Paired with Yao Ming, you say? Wasted, by injuries.
We don’t care if this happens to the Antoine Walker or Richard Jefferson. When it’s someone like McGrady? That’s when we care. That’s when we wish they could see what we’re seeing. That it’s over, basically. “Show some dignity,” we want to tell them. We always feel relieved when they retire, allowing their memories to prevail on YouTube and NBA TV’s Hardwood Classics. We don’t want to remember someone of McGrady’s caliber arriving out of shape for the 2008–09 season, holding the Rockets hostage for a few months, then screwing them by getting microfracture surgery right before the trade deadline. We don’t want to remember him participating in a mutiny against his coach in Detroit, backing up the bust Marvin Williams in Atlanta, or lazying it it upin China for a few million bucks.
We want to remember 22 straight and 32.1 points per game. We want to remember seven All-Star Games in a row. We want to remember McGrady dropping 62 on the Pistons, trash-talking his way to an outbreak against the Bucks (when he became a superstar), nearly nearly pulling a LeBron and beating the Pistons by his damn self. We want to remember him in YouTube vids from clout chasers like Korzemba, videos with titles like “Why T-Mac wasn’t HUMAN!” You want to remember the Kobe nemesis (Look at this comparison):
Player A: 28.4 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 5.3 apg, 43.4 mpg, 45–33–81%, 22.6 FGA, 8.3 FTA, 22.5 PER, 31.1 usage
Player B: 29.5 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 6.5 apg, 42.6 mpg, 43–30–75%, 24.5 FGA, 9.1 FTA, 25.4 PER, 35.3 usage
Yes, this was the two in the NBA playoffs from 2001–2008. Player B was McGrady, in 35 games.
Those 35 playoff games became part of his legacy, for better or worse — once-in-a-generation superatar numbers for someone who obviously couldn’t be that because of how people judge him for not getting out of the second round. We judge these guys by rings first and everything else second. Most of the time, it’s totally fair. In T-Mac’s case, it’s not totally fair. Kobe had Shaq and Phil, and later Gasol and Odom, with a slew of Horrys and Fishers and Rices mixed in. T-Mac’s best teammates were Yao Ming, Grant Hill (played 46 games in four years with McGrady), Mike Miller, a washed-up Dikembe Mutombo, a really washed-up Patrick Ewing, and a really, really, really washed-up Shawn Kemp.
And of course, there’s the wrong career descicsions, like 1998 free agency.
Heading into that summer, McGrady’s name suddenly started landing in the same sentence with fellow free agents Tim Duncan and Grant Hill. How much was a budding All-Star worth who had just passed the legal drinking age? Even though the Raptors were building something special, McGrady bolted for seemingly greener pastures in Orlando. If 2017’s contract rules existed that summer, T-Mac would have been forced to spend an extra two years in Toronto … and probably would have made the Finals in 2001 or 2002. We would have regarded him as the much, much better Pippen, the 6-foot-8 freak athlete who could do everything that Scottie did … only the dude could get buckets, too. We would have discussed T-Mac and Vince like we discuss Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant now. We would have argued about “Shaq and Kobe or Vince and T-Mac?”
Poor McGrady never caught a break. Not one. And once his back started betraying him, that was that. Garnett has that upset ’04 Timberwolves run, then everything that happened in Boston. Iverson has the 2001 Finals. C-Webb has those fantastic Sacramento teams. Ray Allen has the 2001 Bucks, then everything in Boston, then The Shot. Kobe and Duncan have nine rings and 12 Finals appearances between them. Dirk has the 2007 MVP and the 2011 title. Nash has two MVPs and the ridiculously entertaining Seven Seconds or Less era. Jason Kidd has two straight Finals. Pierce has the 2002 playoff run and the 2008 Finals MVP. Even Vince has that one unforgettable playoff duel with Iverson.
Tracy McGrady? He’s the guy who never made it to the second round. And yet, Kobe said that McGrady was his toughest opponent ever. Ever. Think of everyone he’s faced… LeBron? EVER, the Mamba said. Maybe it was the killer’s mentality that eluded him, according to a Stan Van Gundy interview about him I managed to scour up (this took a lot of time):
“Your best player has to set the tone, without question,” Van Gundy explains. “If he doesn’t do that, then it has to be the head coach. But it’s better if the player has it. Tracy was never a leader, but he was a helluva basketball player. If you coached him or coached against him, you would have a much different view. McGrady made people better — he was a great, great passer. Wasn’t a great shooter, but he was a great scorer, could guard, pass, was smart, rebounded. He could do everything. I mean, even Bryant came out and said some nice things … it’s not like Kobe Bryant goes out and blows smoke up people’s ass.”
Basically, all he was really great at was basketball. Luckily, but yet unluckily at the same time, that top-10-player-ever talent should have been all he needed. Remember that when you remember T-Mac. Remember that we’d never seen a 6-foot-8 freak who could score as easily as any 6-foot-8 guy not named George Gervin, only while covering the court like Scottie Pippen once did. Remember him guarding everyone from Dirk Nowitzki to Kobe Bryant, and remember those playoff scoring barrages when he was playing with a bunch of seventh and eighth men. Remember 32.1 ppg and 22 straight, and don’t forget to do a T-Mac YouTube binge a lot. Remember that it’s not just about landing a superstar, but building the right team around him, too.
So as we embark a hall-of-fame career from McGrady, people always are so quick to say, “what if?”. But wouldn’t it be more cool to remember the Magic T-Mac, the NOT HUMAN T-Mac? When he gets inducted into the Hall-of-Fame, the place he was always meant to be, I guess it will be sort of melancholy, an emotional celebrational/regretful night. Like this article.
As McGrady kept chucking up half-hearted shots in those warm-ups, Reggie shook his head. It could have been so much different, so much better. But it wasn’t. So, for once, lets appreciate that.
How will you remember Tracy McGrady?
