Thanks for posting durvasa. It's always nice to hear/read from someone who is as objective as you are.
Yes,he did but he couldn't take things over in many games after that in that same season. I'm not only referring to game winning shots.
No, this is not good enough. I also believe that T-mac is no a closer. To win in the playoffs, Stern has already implicitly decided: Someone has to be able to shoot the jumper or penetrate to either lay it in or get foul shot. T-mac has no jumper now and he won't penetrate. Passing ability is overrated, we don't need that, we need somebody who can score in the last 2 minutes of the game. Period! and T-mac is not that. When the ball is in your hand for the last position, you need to make the shot or get foul shots, no passing the ball to your teammates unless it is wide open. As a matter of fact, I do not trust any Rox players to make wide open shot in the last position.
When tracys on top of his game, he is up there with kobe, wade and lebron when it comes to clutch. Clutch doesent necessarly mean a game winner, it means producing offense in the closing minutes, he gets the ball to the higher percent chance of the ball going in, if that's a kick out to a steve novak or just taking it himself. Tmac had 11 game winners while in orlando, don't know what your talking about. He had 3 against philly, 2 against detroit, 2 against the bulls, 1 against denver, 1 against toronto, 1 against new york, 1 against the wizards and 1 against the lakers. He's had 15 career game winners and 11 career assists for game winners.
That's not true. Of course, McGrady is not as good as Kobe, but. Look what we do in the last 4 or 5 minutes in the game. We are completly LOST. We don't know what to do. Ron Artest usually goes crazy and if we fail to get Yao the ball, we just fire long bombs from the outside. That's all we do in the Clutch. At least Tracy was able to create something off the dribble. He could creat a shot for himself or find his open teammate. That is what we are missing.
He was always a threat and an excellent playmaker...you are correct and that is what we lacked last night against the Lakers and Jazz....I think we should run the offense through Scola at the end of games...
Good thread. McGrady is the anti-closer. He has killed literally dozens of fourth quarters with his incessant heat-checks.
This is a silly thread....When Tracy is/was healthy; he's a hell of a closer. Whether making the right pass or hitting the shot. He didn't have to hit game winners....the Rockets with him are usually win 50+ games a season, which means we won plenty of games without last minute heroics. He's on a short list of the very best closers when healthy.....ask any NBA GM or just wait until the summer of 2010 and see for yourself
I guess you can imply that if he was taking a heat check shot, then at least he had made two buckets before that. If he does't make those, the quarters are probably even worse. Point being, the Rockets have a pretty good history of going into "dry spells" in very crucial times of games. They have problems dealing with a team that decides to start playing real defense. As many have said already, closing is just not hitting shots. It's making the correct play, whether or not it's a shot, pass, etc. Even if the shot is a miss, at least you have a chance. Dislike and write off McGrady all you want. I honestly understand where many of you guys are coming from. But if you deny he was, by far, our best play maker and best decision maker, then you are just clouding your opinions with your dislike for the guy.
There was only one closer on the floor last night, and even if Tmac were healthy there would still have been only one on the floor. DD
Hate as much as you like, but the fact remains that had we last year's t-mac, we'd have likely won this game. There's just no debate about it - because last year we DID win games like this.
Tmac didn't have the stamina and focus to close out games. All he could do was taking those ill-advised 3 pts down the stretch. It worked for one game, it wouldn't work any other times.
Another McGrady thread?? Especially after a lost. Why am I not surprised. Its getting crazy on here with these crazy threads after a loss. Its been a month almost. We gotta get over it. Let him rest and heal and look forward to next season when he comes back. I believe guys just make useless threads after every loss. I know its the past but 13 points in 33 secs ring a bell. How about the closing seconds of the Dallas playoff game 2. Enough said.
