LOL. Great post. I mean, you can prove it, right? Kobe is and always has been on another level from T-Mac, with the exception of MAYBE 2002-2004. Even then it's arguable. Kobe is clutch. He hit's FT's and his jump shot is 100x better than McGrady's. Still, I'm not saying Kobe would get the 1st round with Yao simply because I can't prove it. But I think the chances are much greater than with T-Mac, who has had a history of giving up and pointing fingers.
Sorry. If Kobe can win a Finals with Gasol, I would love to see what he would be able to do with Yao as his 2nd man. You Tmac fans are out of excuses, let your man go. He was never that great anyways, apart of the one 2003 season.
YAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! ...Tracy (ugh, its been so long but still...what kinda name is that?)........not so much.
If we had a fully healthy team in the past 2 seasons then that would probably be 2 championships with Yao and Tracy. The injuries just killed their careers in the playoffs.
Kobe shoots worse in the clutch than in regular time. And T-Mac matches Kobe in regular game time from 2000-2005. Sure T-Mac fell off now but back then he was a beast. It's easy to see why T-Mac was complaining. He was constantly compared to Kobe but he never had the talent around him. So he started b****ing (like Kobe b****ed) to try and get talent around him.
The two were not overrated. They were good enough to take the Rockets to the top. The problem was chemistry, as Magic Johnson mentioned a few years ago.
injuries and not having depth early on was the main thing that led to the duo failing. Officiating, particularly poor officiating on Yao was a big contributor as well. Mac was brought in to help yao and the rox; mac did not get it done. It's not necessarily all mac's fault, but now we go to plan B and hopefully get a team around Yao that can get it done in the next 3-4 yrs and hope Yao recovers well and stays healthy
The truth is, TMac cannot shoot better with a legit bigman. TMac never shot better than .431 in Rox. In comparison, Kobe shot better when O'neal and Gasol in the lineup. LBJ couldn't get to the rim freely if Shaq is in the paint. Same thing with Kobe and TMac in Rox. TMac could only play his Magic style and nothing else, how hard it is to figure out that? And for clutch, Kobe did shoot worse in clutch, all player do, but TMac disappeared in clutch. In game 7 first Utah series, YM led the team from 8 pts deficit to 5 pts lead to start the 4th quarter. With 5 minutes left and 5 points lead, Kobe is able to close out all by himself on offensive side. TMac, on the other hand, bricked one shot after another, and didn't score until the game was lost in final seconds. I believe if you put Kobe in that 5 minutes mark, he more than likely would win it.
Instead of over-rated, I would say they are the most unlucky duo in the league. They don't wish for injuries. I still believe if both T-mac and Yao is 100% fit this season, and surrounded with these great role players we have now, we could have another force to reckon with. Although I think the style will a bit more different, but we can implement the run and gun strategy if Yao and Tmac is sitting taking a breather at the bench, while the other guys run riot. The theory still can't be proved though with both out of the team now, but I still feel both are unlucky with injuries. They even don't play a lot of games together since after the Dallas playoff to be considered a duo.
Everything in life is about timing. Sadly, Yao and Mac were injured a lot at bad times. Last year if Yao, Mac and Ron were all good to go, I think we could have won it all. Also in the Utah and Dallas series Tmac always stepped his game up. His numbers were good. Yao played well too. But during that time our role players sucked ass. Those two then, with the cast now. Wow.
They cant make the shots for them, some players cant be elevated, we call them a losing supporting cast. Give Tmac and Yao prior to 06 this support and they make the Finals.
You can't blame everything on injuries. Injuries are part of the game. TMac did have his knee cleaned up once before last season, but Kobe did it twice too, once in Colorado. If you don't condition yourself in offseason, you are more likely to get injured. TMac reported to training camp out of shape. That's a working ethic problem. And he has no one to blame but himself.
Yes, they are overrated. They are overrated because of injury. 05-06 Tmac + 06-07 Yao would be a deadly combo if not for those injuries.
Yao, for all of his strengths, is not on the same level as Duncan, KG, Shaq, Dirk, etc. Yao isn't a top 5 big men in the NBA and he never was. T-Mac on the otherhand was a top 5 PLAYER in the NBA but obviously he has declined. Yao has never been a superstar, just an all star. T-Mac was a superstar in Orlando.
I said Dwight Howard is still an all star in my book. But he has a better chance than Yao to become a superstar one day simply because he is much more durable and he is still very young. Dwight Howard has put up crazy numbers that Yao hasn't came close to. Dwight will probably be on the all time block shots list later in his career and that guy can rebound the ball much better than Yao. Though right now Yao is better simply because of experience and Yao has a great jumpshot, Dwight is still very young and he can already dominate games much more than Yao. Dwight is capable of putting up 20 pts and 20 rebounds. Yao is more of a 22 pts and 9 rebounds. But overall, both are still an all star but Dwight will become a superstar one day if he keeps this up.
I don't think they were an overrated duo in the sense that either of them was overrated, I just don't think that they ever really played extremely well together. This might be because they both missed so much time to injury that whenever one went down the other became the alpha dog and neither ever really figured out exactly what their roles were when they were together. And this isn't helping the case of them not being overrated, but the one full series they played together they lost to the Jazz with homecourt advantage (I'm not counting the Mavs series, we were thoroughly screwed by the refs). But at the same time, Mcgrady averaged 25-5-7 in that series while Yao was 25-10, so I don't think either of them didn't perform. So no, I don't think they were overrated, just extremely unfortunate with injuries.
