T-Mac "Anybody can win a championship, Everybody can't get in the hall of fame"

Again, why do posters like you look at this completely one-sided? You only mention guys like Harpring, Brewer, Fisher and say we had a decent team, but completely avoid the fact of them having extremely serviceable players like Williams, Kirilenko, Okur, Boozer who completely outplayed their counterparts.
I even posted the numbers of some of the Rockets players and I have yet to see ANY reply from the McGrady bashers here.

Seriously guys, in what world does it make any sense to blame the guy posting historical playoff numbers while many of his teammates constantly got outplayed on both ends and averaged below 30% on field goals and many 1-10 etc games? Somehow your entire logical and critical thinking is turned off when it comes to McGrady, it's baffling.

It really feels like this is a result of bs sources like ESPN and First Take where people yell at each other and blame everything on the star player, as it dumbs down the basketball aspect and makes the discussion accessible to everyone.

 

Yes, they were ok- ish but as always, you got way past prime and no Offense Deke, you got 'dump it to your star player tear drop' Rafer and old over the hill, injured Juwon Howard with a heart condition.

Chuck wasn't an NBA Center for extended minutes, he was a backup PF and C. He was the only surprise one out of 7 games.

You got to see what was beyond the surface.

Shane had a limited role here, he was more involved offensively in Memphis.

At one point Yao or Tmac could not be relied upon, one was always injured. For a season or half a season long.

 

I have an idea for you McGrady fans who feel tormented that 'teams didn't help tracy win a playoff series'.

Just in your minds believe it happened , you know like convince yourself it really happened.

Tracy McGrady has championships like 9 of them. Believe it happened, then tell your friends it happened.
Then TELL THE WORLD it happened.

Do it TOFs, create your own truth and believe til your last breath

 

If everybody could do it why didn't he.....

I do not dislike T-mac, And I also understand what he is trying to say. But it is stupid to say something like that if you never won a championship yourself. Furthermore the goal of basketbal is winning a championship, not making the HOF.

 

Just believe that Tracy McGrady won 10 championships and tell that to everyone you know that it was real.
It was real like air and water and the earth.

Show them a picture it happened, use photoshop, but show them that picture.

You love Tracy McGrady more than any living organism in the world. It is true .

So make your love into facts. Tracy McGrady always won every year and every game. Nobody betrayed him, they loved him like a god.

 

Do you honestly look at your nonsense before posting and think "yea, this is a good reply"? 90% of your posts contain absolutely no coherent thoughts and many of them make me question whether you are incapable of reading and just post pre-written stuff that you guess applies.

It's baffling to see an adult person post this kindergarten crap.

I'M not even a die-hard McGrady fan, never owned any of his jerseys or sneakers, don't follow him on social media or anything. Trying to have a honest basketball discussion, yet all you reply with is utter nonsense and trying to spark some fandom-emotions I'm supposed to have.

 

I accept Tmac and Yao are Hall of Famers because it is true.

This poster you are replying to, does not love the Clutch City teams like you, he love McGrady and he still believes that McGrady failing to win A PLAYOFF SERIES is the fault of everyone else .

I honestly believe he would if were granted one wish, to end war or famine, he would make McGrady win 1 playoff series.

But you and I accept true history.

 

Yes, I became a Rockets fan in 1997 because I'm only here for McGrady. Go back to bed, tinny.

 

So What if you had the worst gms (orlando, toronto) or played on teams plagued with injuries (hill, yao, himself and role players like howard, mike miller, and sura).

He almost won one in san antonio. If he played another year he would have. Then what? It proves nothing.

 

Clutch is the greatest Rockets fan here and founder of this site.
Yet you call him classless for voicing the same feeling all us REAL FANS felt at the time.

You, in Germany, commenting on Clutch, who was in Houston AT EVERY GAME, on this subject?

You have no credentials or are not even anywhere in the same level as Clutch or even me.

 

How many times are you going to dig up this post? Do you have it saved up because you're still crying years later when somebody doesn't share the same opinion as Clutch?
I 100% stand by my opinion and adults don't have to agree with each other. I have absolutely no issues with Clutch and everyone is free to voice their opinion, I just felt like it wasn't warranted and posting it a year later was questionable.

Sorry that I hurt your childish feelings when disagreeing with your personal idol.

 

You have done nothing for Rockets fans. Clutch created this place and goes to every game. Do you go to every game?

You are no different from a Jeremy Lin fan because it's they acted the same way when Clutch mentions something that is truthful and honest based on detailed observations . Except McGrady is your Lin.

 

Again, I live in Germany, how am I supposed to attend every game? Are you seriously not able to comprehend it?

Many people in that thread shared similar sentiments, don't see you calling them out. This board isn't a dictatorship and I'm sure Clutch welcomes open debate, it's what keeps this site going.

And please don't talk about doing something for this site or the Rockets, you are poisonous to this board, have derailed countless threads with absolute nonsense and show glaring hate towards people of certain national backgrounds. It's also not possible to have a healthy debate, as every single reply you come up with lacks any coherent thought or actual answers to things that people ask.

 

You didn't like Clutch's article because it was true:

Oh, here's the article!

http://www.clutchfans.net/news/1545/the_day_t-mac_lost_houston/

The Day T-Mac Lost The City of Houston

After debacle in Toronto, Rockets star is going to have to win back Houston fans



MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2009 12:34 PM CST

By Clutch
Copyright 2009 ClutchFans.net

Tracy McGrady had diehard Rockets fans at "hello" when the team acquired him from the Orlando Magic in 2004, and by the summer of 2005 he could have run for public office in the city and won by a landslide.
The 6-foot-8 wing was loaded with natural scoring talent, but his high basketball IQ and innate passing ability brought together a ragtag group of teammates and won over the masses in the city.

13 points in 33 seconds. "The Dunk" over Shawn Bradley. We're talking true Superstarville. Bringing the entire package at just 25 years old and gracing the court alongside Yao Ming, McGrady looked poised to deliver on the "big things" he promised in Houston.

So how exactly, in the span of a Presidential term, have things gone so horribly wrong for McGrady in Houston?

After the Rockets 40-point loss in Dallas in Game 7 in 2005, McGrady said, “I’m 25 years old and I’ve got a lot more years in this league, and I will be back next year. I will be back next year.”

I believed him. We believed him. Only, he wasn’t back the next year. While McGrady sat out some games with a legitimate back injury, the 2005-06 lottery season saw him miss many others for mysterious reasons.

McGrady returned strong the next season and played very well for much of the first half of 2007-08, but he still managed to feed his critics by how he responded when there was an uphill battle to climb. There was that game against Golden State. There was that game in Philadelphia. There were several games he just decided not to play in the final hour. While naysayers mocked McGrady’s "It's On Me" declaration (followed by "It Wasn't Really On Me"), this was something far more concerning. There was a growing sentiment that McGrady, while gloriously talented, was not the guy you wanted next to you in the foxhole if things started to go south.

Yet, while this voice of frustration was starting to build in the city towards McGrady, his rare talent and critical importance to the team drowned it out. He still had the support of the majority of the fans.

Then Toronto happened.


January 2, 2009. The Rockets are in Toronto to face the Raptors. The team and McGrady had just established that T-Mac would only play one game of back-to-backs, and with Atlanta to follow the next night, Toronto was chosen as the game T-Mac would play.

Or so we thought. T-Mac was badly off, shooting 2-9 from the floor to go with a pair of assists and turnovers. His body language was bad. With the game slipping in the third quarter, it went from bad to downright terrible.

The Rockets were down 17 and had the ball with 1:30 left in the quarter. Carl Landry gets the ball in the post, turns to score and hits a wall of two defenders in his grill. Why does he have two guys on him? Because there’s a Rocket player not in the play… not even in a panned camera view.

McGrady is standing a few feet from the halfcourt line.

Landry tries to pass to the only open guy by throwing a risky 30-foot laser. Like a safety, Raptors forward Jamario Moon swoops in to intercept and is taking it to the house. McGrady, because he was out of the play to begin with, has a good 5+ feet on Moon almost the entire way back down, but as they get to the basket, T-Mac plays the matador, letting Moon go right by him for an easy dunk.

The next play was much more damning.

Rafer Alston, Ron Artest, Luis Scola and Landry are all running a play. They’re all hustling. They’re all trying to make something happen. However, it takes five, baby.

McGrady is not in the play. Again. He’s standing just inside the halfcourt line. Again. When Scola gets an offensive rebound, he gets the ball back up top to McGrady, who has no interest, playing hot potato with it immediately.

By now it was evident. This wasn’t an injury. This was showing apathy. This was pouting. This was quitting.

McGrady confessed after the game he was a "little frustrated", but his source wasn’t an injury -- "It's kind of hard to get in the groove when you're only touching the ball once every five minutes," said McGrady.

And there you go. The effort qualified as both the straw that broke the camel's back for many Houston fans and the smoking gun for his critics.

From there, McGrady and the team went in opposite directions.

T-Mac took two weeks off to get in shape, proclaimed that he was now back to his normal self, then two weeks later announced on his own through ESPN, without so much as a Post-It note to the Rockets organization, that he was shutting it down to undergo microfracture surgery. When McGrady did show up at the arena, he was booed regularly by the Houston faithful.

Meanwhile, the team won 22 of their final 30 games, broke the first round playoff curse, pushed the eventual champions to 7 games and endeared themselves to the city by establishing an identity as a fearless, hard-working squad that never surrenders.

Now, just 6 months later, this same franchise is supposed to trumpet the return of the anti-Cal Ripken, the embodiment of apathy, excess and entitlement, as their offensive leader -- a forced marriage that now seems a painfully awkward fit.

This shouldn't be about hate, love, payback, insurance or rehab. It's also not about his talent, which isn't in question. It's about being confronted with the reality of what last season confirmed. It's about having a clear knowledge now that McGrady is not a guy you can count on. We know this now – we’ve put it to the test.

I've been a diehard Rockets fan for as long as I can remember, and I've often said I would EBay my soul for a few extra 'W's. As fate would have it, that's exactly what it would feel like I'd be doing by welcoming back McGrady with open arms and pretending the Toronto game just never happened.

 

Tinman...

I have no words...

 

So what? Why is the Toronto game (not even playoffs) something T-Mac has to be hated for years afterwards, while you self-proclaimed "love Harden", who completely checked out during an elimination game?
Please just respond to this question and don't come up with empty crap again.

 

Yes Harden failed vs the Spurs without Leonard. I accepted that he failed.
But I also accept that he has advanced the Rockets to the WCF and I also accepted that he resigned with the Rockets.
I accept that James is very durable is not a brittle player like Tmac.

It's better 20 playoff games and first round exits. Way better. And I only have optimism cause we have Chris Paul.

 

So we're just going to ignore that Harden played abysmal in the Clippers elimination game, was benched and we only advanced because of his teammates?

So Harden being benched and bailed out by teammates=carried the team to WCF.
McGrady with historical PER and teammates who had a number of games with less than 10% field goal percentage = McGrady failed the Rockets?

Stunning logic, it's like debating with a dog.

 

No point in responding to tinman @Yung-T. I just posted a gif mocking him for being cookoo and living in his own world, pretending I'm the one celebrating over the fact that he validates me by saying WE and he liked it so...

 

Look I am not saying that T-mac was a bad player. Far from it, he was a very good player. He was unlucky on several occasions. But that being said the goal of basketball is winning a championship, and he did not achieve it. Saying everybody can win a championship just sounds like sour grapes if you did not win a championship yourself. He obviously did not win a championship, so his statement is not true.