FreeDarko presents The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Tracy McGrady excerpt

Spot on. The big criticism I have of Tmac is that he is such a talent that the team must wrap around his persona and game, but he has never made his teammates better. Is that his responsibility? Yes, it is. When you're the lead dog and your teammates get used to deferring to you, you either enjoy the center stage or you find a way to have your team take responsibility. With Adelman, Tracy has a coach that wants to distribute the responsibility but a guy like Mac (and Rafer apparently) have difficulty cooperating with that kind of gameplan. Too much center stage mentality.

This is spot on as well. I am a firm believer that you must have consistency and perseverance in the smallest, unglamorous things in order to truly accomplish great things. That's one of the reasons why I LOVE our current rotation - guys like Yao, Scola, Battier - they have their limitations but they are consummate professionals that put in far beyond the minimum. A guy like Tracy - with great power comes great responsibility. And when you are a talent like he is, it is tempting to coast by on talent and cut corners elsewhere, but that will cost you in the long run, and it has certainly cost Tracy.

Great post.

 

What same roster? Only 3 or 4 players remained on the roster.

 

Five of the players remained from the previous year. Of the five players that stayed 3 were starters and 2 were heavy rotation players. Below I have the leading point scores of the team to show that basically you are supposedly improving the team offensively by adding Tracy and Mike Miller. By adding Tracy you only increased the teams wins by 2.

1999-00
Darrell Armstrong 1330
John Amaechi 836
Chucky Atkins 782
Pat Garrity 675
Monty Williams 651


2000- 01
Tracy McGrady 2065
Darrell Armstrong 1189
Mike Miller 975
John Amaechi 650
Pat Garrity 628

 

Ok, so it was five players, I forgot about Monty Williams. How is that "the same roster"?

Ben Wallace, Corey Maggette, Ron Mercer and Chucky Atkins all had significant roles the season before.

 

I am tired of this freaking "If T-Mac comes back" game. He's done in this town, and he'll never be wanted again. Not just my sentiments, they are shared by fans, management, and most importantly, his former teammates.

 

T-Mac sucks. Period. End of story. Sell your T-Mac jersey on EBay and move on!

 

lebron and kobe play defense and are relentless on offense and they dont get lazy anytime during the game.

yeah, if we had either of those players in place of tmac we wouldve at least gotten to the WCF one of those years or maybe multiple times.

also tmac just isnt built like them.

 

Indeed. I just recently discovered Eric Musselman's blog ( http://emuss.blogspot.com/2008/12/using-video-to-take-opponent-out-of-his.html ) which has some really great material on it. Check out Kobe's pre-game preparation, for defense .... incredible!