[Magic Basketball]Was Tracy McGrady's Prime Wasted?

Sounds like a familiar discussion.

It's cheap to blame it on TMac's supporting cast but basketball is won as a team and lost as a team. It's his fault as much as it is everyone else on his teams, but I don't see how an objective person can look back and say the guys around him were better than the opponents.

The infamous '4 players scored' game was just the crown on top of TMac's career, which will likely forever be debated.

 

I don't think it was. Winning a championship is not only about having a great basketball skill. The way he played was only for getting a nice contract and sponsors.

 

This is easy to say, but I'm not sure what it means.

I think that's just our way of retroactively trying to make sense of how a phenom player had such bad luck.

 

tmac could have done more, but if he had a supporting cast, what he did was more than enough.

the magic supporting cast was a joke. you had declerqq starting at C with pat garrity at PF for 2 years. patrick ewing played huge minutes in their first 2 playoff runs. it was sad to see. tmac in orlando with a great supporting cast could have gone all the way. he was that good.

his prime, he was like the scoring durant PLUS the playmaking of a PG. that is unreal.

anyways, his career is most likely over. it was fun to watch him though.

 

Actually I think TMac and Yao had a true shot to go very deep in the playoff just a few years back. All they needed was not to be unlucky. But they were unlucky.

 

Have you seen the way Kobe and Wade and Rondo played inthe playoffs? and MJ? They're very very very focused and work very hard. that's something I didn't see from Tmac.

 

tmac played at a superstar level in every playoff series except the 06-07 v. the jazz. what are you talking about?

he literally did everything humanly possible. he was like lebron james but shooting 43% instead of 50%.

 

Really, go watch some more Mac highlights in the playoffs. That is a player giving it his all and pushing his team as far as it will go. He may have a bad rap for his last two years in Houston, but the guy put up numbers in the playoffs that were only matched by a few.

 

I can see him catching some flack for not advancing with Houston even though you can still make some excuses for him.


I don't really see how you can bash him for those Orlando teams though if you see how that roster looked while he was there.


Always said Orlando getting better had a lot to do with not having all that money on bench(Grant Hill)

 

You can only call his tenure with the Magic his prime because he got his career derailed by injuries. He was 22-24 when he was with the Magic. Even with him turning pro in HS, that's way to early to be the prime of a career. He should've primed with us.

The injuries accounted for more far and away.

 

T-mac Played great in the playoff. I will go so far as to say if LBJ had played that hard this year, Cavs might have gone farther. T-Mac kinda l was like karl malone. His problem is he does not have a killer instinct and made some bad plays at the end of games.

 

i'm actually impressed with this article..

they used "WAS" instead of "IF"

 

People often forget, His career has been a success, that cannot be denied. Fair enough, his potential hasn't got him as far as it maybe should (bad luck, injuries, bad supporting cast etc) but still it has been a successful career.

 

I don't think you can even call the Hornets series a toss up, BD Mash wesley that was a better team.

 

I'm not one to defend, or really criticize T-Mac outside of the surgery announcement fiasco.

T-Mac dropped 40 on Dallas in Game 7 in 05
In 07 and 08 he played well in the playoffs, not exceptional but well, and he didn't have Yao in 08.

The guy gets undo criticism for failing, the only real failure may have been 07. and that team was limited by shane battier being your third best player.

 

Look, nobody disputes Tracy McGrady is talented.

I also agree that his Orlando teams were underdogs, and his Houston teams were, at most, even with the Jazz at Mavs during these years and had some matchup problems (for example Jon Barry, David Wesley etc. just physically could not match up with Josh Howard and Stackhouse when Dallas went small). Some of those playof losses are really due to luck or factors other than McGrady's effort.

However, it's also undisputed that the guy has a tendency to give up when facing adversity. The 21-win season in Orlando. If you have that kind of talent and is giving 100%, 21-win season just don't happen. That season was like the Jamario Moon dunk lasting 82 games. Gasol had a 22-win season, too, and my opinion is that Gasol also wasn't giving 100%. It's not that you can't win with these guys in the right situation. It's not to say these guys are horrible human beings or criminals... But the facts are just what they are.

 

IMO he can still possibly be in his prime.

 

T-Mac is the most overrated player of all time -- anybody could score like that if they took every shot.

 

dude did u see Tmac kill the jazz by himself...?! he was injured and still played on a high lvel in the playoffs!!i watched every game so u calling me a liar?!