Wanted: Help for McGrady By Steve Kerr, Yahoo! Sports May 6, 2007 HOUSTON – Tracy McGrady told the media, his teammates and anyone else who would listen before the first round that if the Houston Rockets lost "it would be on me." McGrady has taken a lot of heat over the years for never having won a playoff series, but this was the first time his team would actually be favored. T-Mac decided to put all the pressure on himself. So after watching his Rockets lose Game 7 to the Utah Jazz on Saturday, a loss that extended McGrady's winless playoff series streak to six, I couldn't help but feel bad for him. He may or may not have done the right thing in welcoming the blame, but in the end, he didn't deserve it. The simple fact of the matter is that Houston just isn't a very good team, and McGrady needs more help. Don't get me wrong: The Rockets are OK. They did win 52 games this season, but relatively speaking, they're not among the NBA's elite. They are a slow, plodding team in a league that is going more and more up-tempo. Houston relied on solid defense, attention to detail and the scoring of Yao Ming and McGrady to win a lot of games in a watered-down league. But now that the playoffs are here, the best teams are on display and everyone's weaknesses are exposed. And for the Rockets, their biggest weakness – a lack of playmaking perimeter players – was all too apparent. The Jazz ran circles around Houston with their two young studs – Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer – doing whatever they wanted to do. Yao stood no chance in slowing down Boozer, who was way too quick for him, and Williams had his way with Rafer Alston, who, despite his "Skip to My Lou"/And1 pedigree, is hardly a track star. In the end, as we have seen so often in the playoffs this year, speed won out, and the Rockets don't have much of it. If McGrady and Houston are going to reach the next level, they'll need a major talent infusion. Jeff Van Gundy told me a couple of years ago that with two stars like Yao and T-Mac – both very docile men – "you need a team of pit bulls around them." Look at the roster and you won't find many. Shane Battier might be the only guy you could describe as a pit bull. He plays great defense, takes charges and hits open shots. But nobody on the Rockets scares you. No one puts fear in the defense, as in, "Man, we've got to stop that guy." They don't have a single player who can break down the defense and create a shot. And as we're seeing with teams like Phoenix, Chicago and Golden State, it's critical to have multiple players who can attack defenses and score the ball. The NBA has changed quite a bit in the past five years or so, and big, stodgy teams aren't effective anymore. The Spurs have been great with Tim Duncan in the post, but only because they added Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to the mix several years back. With today's rules – the zone defense and hand checking, in particular – it's critical to have slashing perimeter players. Zones make it easy to bottle up big men, so you have to be able to rely on perimeter penetration to generate offense. And since you can't hand check anymore, great guards can get to the rim. Look at some of the players who are dominating the league these days – Baron Davis, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Ben Gordon, etc. Houston needs one of those guys. McGrady is an interesting player. He's a great athlete who doesn't really want to run. He's more of a half-court guy, capable of rising up and shooting jumpers, or driving around his defender for dunks. He can take over games with his skills and win them by himself. But Houston relies so heavily on him that he has to do everything – score, rebound and pass – every game. Against the good teams, it's not enough. If the Rockets are going to take the next step, they have to find players who can help McGrady. An attacking point guard who can break a defense down. A forward who can run the floor for easy hoops. Anyone who can take pressure off the guy. In the end, this season was a failure for the Rockets. The franchise needed to win one playoff series – something it hasn't done in the three seasons Yao and T-Mac have been together. The Rockets needed to justify their All-Star combo. They needed some upward mobility and some momentum to go forward. But now the questions will begin. Will Jeff Van Gundy, who doesn't have a contract for next year, return as head coach? Will Daryl Morey, who will take over for retiring general manager Carroll Dawson, want to bring in someone new as his own guy? And how much personnel turnover will there be? The only thing that's for sure is that if McGrady is a Rocket, his only hope of advancing past the first round is if he gets some help. Because he can't do it all by himself. Steve Kerr is Yahoo! Sports' NBA analyst. Send Steve a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_y...LYF?slug=sk-mcgrady050507&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
steve kerr is right on target. outside of tmac and yao, i doubt any other players on our team would be getting significant minutes on one of the elite nba teams. and tmac is the ONLY versatile player on our roster. anyone who blames this on tmac has no understanding of basketball whatsoever. when you rely on one guy to create all the plays and hit all the big shots, how can you possibly expect to win this game?
I don't believe this crap that everyone repeats ad nauseum about how the game favours perimeter players who are slashers. If that's the case, then the denver nuggets should win the NBA championship this year, they have the two best perimeter slashers in the League, and they have the reigning Defensive player of the year. This uptempo talk is just the latest fad, the teams that win are still the teams with a post presence and great team work, see Spurs, and Pistons.
Denver got killed because their slashers had no one to kick to but JR "Bonehead" Smith, it's hard to win playoff games when your only hope is Steve Blake making a shot. Plus they really sucked defensively, Camby was just able to cover for everyone else getting beaten by their men in the regular season and rack up blocks. He got exposed badly by the Spurs. About the speed thing - you're conveniently forgetting that in addition to Timmy, SA has two of the best perimeter slashers in the league in Manu and Parker. Duncan is SA's offensive anchor but his legacy was going down the tubes in '05 against the Pistons til Big Shot Rob saved his ass in Game 5. Ginobili should have gotten Finals MVP that year.
T-Mac and Yao need help. Start with the coach, point guard and the so called bench. In other word he said that we did not have heart to win it all.
Also, Tmac shouldn't say some stupid things in the playoff, and can't live up to it. Like, "we're going to win on Monday, quote me on it" and lost, and act like it's nothing back in orlandoo. Now, he goes and said that "it's on all on him", this will create a lot of conflict for the team, it will damage other player's confident, and see what happen in the playoff, guys are relying on Tmac too much because it's all on him.
But wait -- Kerr didn't mention any Lenovo or 82games rating! How could he be accurate in his thinking!
In this offseason we have to bring more help I mean a good PG and a solid PF. Of course we wanna a good guy to the bench
Only 7 teams since 2001 have blown a playoff series when they had a 2 game adavantage. Tmac was on THREE of those 7. DD
So. it was the same story. crap supporting cast. even steve kerr admits that this was'nt mac's fault.
I would say that Mcgrady put himself in position for both the 2-0 leads in two of those. Possibly in this one. As you all know Basketball is a team game. Mcgrady regularly steps up in the playoffs. I always seem to think, he gets it to where he can, and his team just doesn't step up with him. You can't look at his records. You have to look at his help. Basketball is a team sport. Our team has big glaring holes WHICH might i remind you ALL of us were aware of and afraid of in the playoffs. Blaming T-mac is ridiculous since we could see the problem from way off
Obviously we have not done a very good job of putting a roster together. On a good team Battier would be the 5th or 6th best player, on the rockets he is 3rd. Hayes and Alston are great role players off the bench, but well below average as starters on a contender. We either need a 3rd consistent 15+ ppg scorer and the majority of our players should be competant enough to score consistently without being set up via assist. Right now almost none of them can do this.
you mean none of them can do this except Mcgrady who is currently being crucified for doing just that.
The only thing I blame T-Mac for is not going to the hole alot more in this series. He seemed to get a layup, foul, assist or at the very least a wide open shot for someone every time he drove to the hoop, and indeed the only reason the game was close last night was because of this. Yet many times, including down the stretch he settled for jump shots. I know he CAN make them, but all things being equal you drive to the hoop until they stop you, especially when you are in the bonus and at home where the calls should go your way more often than not. That being said this is the first series he was favored to win, and even that is a stretch since it took a major collapse on Utah's part to give us home court. So the never made it to the 2nd round thing is a bit over blown. I would consider trading T-Mac though because he has had lingering back issues for several years and those don't tend to get better with age. That and the fact that he settles for jumpers a ton more than he did back when he was leading the league in scoring. Combine that with the playoff losses and I don't consider him untouchable. At the same time I wouldn't trade him just for the sake of trading him either. It would have to be in exchange for a Garnett or Nowitzki caliber player and I don't know that either of those would significantly improve the rockets over what T-Mac has done with this roster. Of course the problem the rockets face is we don't really have anything of value to trade. Our young players mostly don't play and our rotation players outside of tmac, yao and battier aren't that good.
[Yahoo!] Wanted: Help for McGrady http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AhFkmD1WNZ4gl05EnfijaqS8vLYF?slug=sk-mcgrady050507&prov=yhoo&type=lgns HOUSTON – Tracy McGrady told the media, his teammates and anyone else who would listen before the first round that if the Houston Rockets lost "it would be on me." McGrady has taken a lot of heat over the years for never having won a playoff series, but this was the first time his team would actually be favored. T-Mac decided to put all the pressure on himself. So after watching his Rockets lose Game 7 to the Utah Jazz on Saturday, a loss that extended McGrady's winless playoff series streak to six, I couldn't help but feel bad for him. He may or may not have done the right thing in welcoming the blame, but in the end, he didn't deserve it. The simple fact of the matter is that Houston just isn't a very good team, and McGrady needs more help. Don't get me wrong: The Rockets are OK. They did win 52 games this season, but relatively speaking, they're not among the NBA's elite. They are a slow, plodding team in a league that is going more and more up-tempo. Houston relied on solid defense, attention to detail and the scoring of Yao Ming and McGrady to win a lot of games in a watered-down league. But now that the playoffs are here, the best teams are on display and everyone's weaknesses are exposed. And for the Rockets, their biggest weakness – a lack of playmaking perimeter players – was all too apparent. ADVERTISEMENT The Jazz ran circles around Houston with their two young studs – Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer – doing whatever they wanted to do. Yao stood no chance in slowing down Boozer, who was way too quick for him, and Williams had his way with Rafer Alston, who, despite his "Skip to My Lou"/And1 pedigree, is hardly a track star. In the end, as we have seen so often in the playoffs this year, speed won out, and the Rockets don't have much of it. If McGrady and Houston are going to reach the next level, they'll need a major talent infusion. Jeff Van Gundy told me a couple of years ago that with two stars like Yao and T-Mac – both very docile men – "you need a team of pit bulls around them." Look at the roster and you won't find many. Shane Battier might be the only guy you could describe as a pit bull. He plays great defense, takes charges and hits open shots. But nobody on the Rockets scares you. No one puts fear in the defense, as in, "Man, we've got to stop that guy." They don't have a single player who can break down the defense and create a shot. And as we're seeing with teams like Phoenix, Chicago and Golden State, it's critical to have multiple players who can attack defenses and score the ball. The NBA has changed quite a bit in the past five years or so, and big, stodgy teams aren't effective anymore. The Spurs have been great with Tim Duncan in the post, but only because they added Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to the mix several years back. With today's rules – the zone defense and hand checking, in particular – it's critical to have slashing perimeter players. Zones make it easy to bottle up big men, so you have to be able to rely on perimeter penetration to generate offense. And since you can't hand check anymore, great guards can get to the rim. Look at some of the players who are dominating the league these days – Baron Davis, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Ben Gordon, etc. Houston needs one of those guys. McGrady is an interesting player. He's a great athlete who doesn't really want to run. He's more of a half-court guy, capable of rising up and shooting jumpers, or driving around his defender for dunks. He can take over games with his skills and win them by himself. But Houston relies so heavily on him that he has to do everything – score, rebound and pass – every game. Against the good teams, it's not enough. If the Rockets are going to take the next step, they have to find players who can help McGrady. An attacking point guard who can break a defense down. A forward who can run the floor for easy hoops. Anyone who can take pressure off the guy. In the end, this season was a failure for the Rockets. The franchise needed to win one playoff series – something it hasn't done in the three seasons Yao and T-Mac have been together. The Rockets needed to justify their All-Star combo. They needed some upward mobility and some momentum to go forward. But now the questions will begin. Will Jeff Van Gundy, who doesn't have a contract for next year, return as head coach? Will Daryl Morey, who will take over for retiring general manager Carroll Dawson, want to bring in someone new as his own guy? And how much personnel turnover will there be? The only thing that's for sure is that if McGrady is a Rocket, his only hope of advancing past the first round is if he gets some help. Because he can't do it all by himself.
