Jul 6, 10:52 PM Two death threats alarm Magic GM Weisbrod says home vandalized around time of McGrady trade BY JOHN DENTON FLORIDA TODAY ORLANDO, Fla. - John Weisbrod knew turning around the Orlando Magic would be a difficult task, but never did he count on having to deal with the external issues that have arisen of late. Orlando Magic general manager John Weisbrod has received death threats after trading Tracy McGrady to the Houston Rockets. Image © 2004, Craig Bailey, FLORIDA TODAY Weisbrod, the Magic's general manager since March, has twice received written death threats at his home in suburban Orlando and was forced to retreat to a hotel last week and check in under an alias. The first incident happened on June 17 -- one week before the NBA Draft -- when a written note threatening Weisbrod's life was taped to the front door of his house. The latest incident happened June 30, the day the Magic officially traded superstar Tracy McGrady and three others to the Houston Rockets for Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley and Kelvin Cato. Vandals wrote threatening messages on the glass front door of Weisbrod's house with some sort of marker. "I get harassing correspondence all the time, but when it starts happening at your house, that raises the bar to a different level," Weisbrod said. "Getting e-mails is one thing, but when they start writing on your house with paint, that's totally different. "I guess this is kind of par for the course. The trade was an emotional issue and a public issue, but really you wouldn't think it would have gone this far. But I guess there are always going to be wackos out there." Weisbrod, 35, was the Magic's chief negotiator in the often-contentious dealings with McGrady. McGrady led the NBA in scoring the past two seasons and made the All-Star team each of his four years with the Magic, but Weisbrod admitted last week that McGrady wasn't his type of player because of his questionable work ethic. McGrady was dealt to Houston despite his status as one of the most popular players in the 15-year history of the Magic organization. Orlando was a dismal 21-61 last season and Weisbrod has said repeatedly he is determined to use this offseason to shuffle the Magic's mix. Weisbrod said the Magic notified the Orange County Sheriff's Office last week of the incidents, but he noted that there has been no official report filed because he was "trying to keep it under a low profile and out of the public eye." But he said the Sheriff's Department took the written note to analyze it for fingerprints and to study the handwriting. McGrady met with Magic owner Rich DeVos and team president Bob Vander Weide on June 17, a meeting in which Vander Weide said that McGrady told them, "My heart is no longer into playing here." Later that night, when word broke that McGrady had likely played his last game with the Magic, Weisbrod came home and found the handwritten note taped to his front door. He said he wasn't shaken up by it and in fact went about his business. "I went back to the house to change clothes before we took (draft prospect Emeka) Okafor out to dinner and found it," Weisbrod said. "I called (Magic assistant general manager) Scott Herring and told him about it and then went on to dinner. So I can't say that it really bothered me." But the second incident certainly did. The McGrady trade became official on June 30 and was announced at a morning news conference. But when Weisbrod returned home later that day, he saw that threatening messages had been written on the front door of his home. He said he thought some sort of grease pen had been used to scribble the threats. "Both incidents were threatening my life," he said. Weisbrod, who is divorced with a 10-year-old child, spent the next two nights alone in a hotel, "just trying to let this thing blow over." He admitted that the latest incident was somewhat unnerving. "You just don't expect the job to pervade into your personal life," he said. "I'm sure the people around me are taking this far more serious than I am and that's probably a good thing. "I guess, really, this is just par and parcel to the job." Contact Denton at [email protected]
