Thibodeau still says Mcgrady is a possibility, but shooting is first priority

Why is it an insult? McGrady has never been a shooter.

 

He is a shooter, just not a maker.

DD

 

In an odd way I feel that is what teams fear the most when it comes to signing T-Mac. He's still a very popular player (see all star voting) and if he has a good game, whoever the coach is will get criticized as being stubborn for not playing him more. Plus, its always like playing well for T-Mac is offense, whereas at this point in his career he's a huge defensive liability...

It's akin to when we had V-Span except without the potential.

 

Houston is not the player I have in mind. I am envisioning a Grant Hill/Bernard King style comeback. He only needs to swallow his pride and earn his starter minutes back.

 

lol when's the last time you gave t-mac a compliment. all you do is hate on him. i understand he made some questionable decisions but damn. gave the guy a break man and just wish the dude good luck

 

No athleticism? I think ur seriously underrating the guy. Though injury prone, he's still a good player. If he can manage to be 85% of what he was he's still better than most NBA players.

 

Hmmm, let's see, compliment Tmac....what can I say....compliment...hmmmm..compliment....oh, I got one.


Tracy, thank you very much for whining your sorry ass out of Houston and allowing the fans to get players that don't quit on their teamates on the floor or in the locker room.

So, thanks !

How was that?

DD

 

that's all i was asking for man

 

Ok DD, i'm being serious. No sarcasm on both ends please. When T-mac was healthy and doing well for the Rockets, did you actually like him and root for him? Or have you always hated him?

 

listen dude.

DD has seen Hakeem Olajuwon play. His standard for Rockets superstar is way higher than yours.

there's no "if" involved. Dream got elbowed in the face by Bill Cartright in a game and he still came back after 25 games. If that happened to tracy he would be out for 2 years, one year for lazy rehab, the next year tim grover rehab.

 

wow, so tracy is going to be putting up lebron's rebounds + assists totals?

 

i will bet anyone $50 to the tip jar that mcgrady does not average 15 ppg if he plays this year.

any takers?

i had one, but he disappeared on me.

 

he tracy mcgradied you!

 

I didn't know we answered for others on here bruh..

Anyway I hate to break it to you dude, but DD is not the only one to have seen the Dream play live. I actually attended many of the games at UH and watched Hakeem, Clyde, Mr. Mean, Reid Gettys, Benny Anders, Eric Dickens, Alvin Franklin, Dave Rose, and Michael Young slaughter their oppenents. Fun times..

I was overjoyed when Houston was able to draft him, as were many other Houstonians who followed Houston basketball. It was said to see the Phi Slamma Jamma go, but life goes on..

And I do remember when Dream got elbowed, it seemed to be an accident, but with Cartright you never know..

My point is, that I have seen the great ones play too. I'm not saying Mcgrady is anywhere near the player Hakeem was, i'm just saying Mcgrady was one hell of a player in his prime in Orlando and Houston. To disregard his good years would be foolish.

 

Here we go again with the pitchforks and torches.

I must post this again to prove a point:

DD and tinman:



vs

T-Mac

 

if you haven't figured out why tracy mcgrady has pissed off Rocket fans by now, you'll never figure it out.

There's this dude named Clutch who started this website, he wrote this article
http://www.clutchfans.net/news/1545/the_day_t-mac_lost_houston/

 

taste it tmac fan. from Rocket fans.


The Day T-Mac Lost The City of Houston
After debacle in Toronto, Rockets star is going to have to win back Houston fans
MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2009 12:34 PM CST
By Clutch
Copyright 2009 ClutchFans.net
Tracy McGrady had diehard Rockets fans at "hello" when the team acquired him from the Orlando Magic in 2004, and by the summer of 2005 he could have run for public office in the city and won by a landslide.

The 6-foot-8 wing was loaded with natural scoring talent, but his high basketball IQ and innate passing ability brought together a ragtag group of teammates and won over the masses in the city.

13 points in 33 seconds. "The Dunk" over Shawn Bradley. We're talking true Superstarville. Bringing the entire package at just 25 years old and gracing the court alongside Yao Ming, McGrady looked poised to deliver on the "big things" he promised in Houston.

So how exactly, in the span of a Presidential term, have things gone so horribly wrong for McGrady in Houston?

After the Rockets 40-point loss in Dallas in Game 7 in 2005, McGrady said, “I’m 25 years old and I’ve got a lot more years in this league, and I will be back next year. I will be back next year.”

I believed him. We believed him. Only, he wasn’t back the next year. While McGrady sat out some games with a legitimate back injury, the 2005-06 lottery season saw him miss many others for mysterious reasons.

McGrady returned strong the next season and played very well for much of the first half of 2007-08, but he still managed to feed his critics by how he responded when there was an uphill battle to climb. There was that game against Golden State. There was that game in Philadelphia. There were several games he just decided not to play in the final hour. While naysayers mocked McGrady’s "It's On Me" declaration (followed by "It Wasn't Really On Me"), this was something far more concerning. There was a growing sentiment that McGrady, while gloriously talented, was not the guy you wanted next to you in the foxhole if things started to go south.

Yet, while this voice of frustration was starting to build in the city towards McGrady, his rare talent and critical importance to the team drowned it out. He still had the support of the majority of the fans.

Then Toronto happened.

January 2, 2009. The Rockets are in Toronto to face the Raptors. The team and McGrady had just established that T-Mac would only play one game of back-to-backs, and with Atlanta to follow the next night, Toronto was chosen as the game T-Mac would play.

Or so we thought. T-Mac was badly off, shooting 2-9 from the floor to go with a pair of assists and turnovers. His body language was bad. With the game slipping in the third quarter, it went from bad to downright terrible.

The Rockets were down 17 and had the ball with 1:30 left in the quarter. Carl Landry gets the ball in the post, turns to score and hits a wall of two defenders in his grill. Why does he have two guys on him? Because there’s a Rocket player not in the play… not even in a panned camera view.

McGrady is standing a few feet from the halfcourt line.

Landry tries to pass to the only open guy by throwing a risky 30-foot laser. Like a safety, Raptors forward Jamario Moon swoops in to intercept and is taking it to the house. McGrady, because he was out of the play to begin with, has a good 5+ feet on Moon almost the entire way back down, but as they get to the basket, T-Mac plays the matador, letting Moon go right by him for an easy dunk.

The next play was much more damning.

Rafer Alston, Ron Artest, Luis Scola and Landry are all running a play. They’re all hustling. They’re all trying to make something happen. However, it takes five, baby.

McGrady is not in the play. Again. He’s standing just inside the halfcourt line. Again. When Scola gets an offensive rebound, he gets the ball back up top to McGrady, who has no interest, playing hot potato with it immediately.

By now it was evident. This wasn’t an injury. This was showing apathy. This was pouting. This was quitting.

McGrady confessed after the game he was a "little frustrated", but his source wasn’t an injury -- "It's kind of hard to get in the groove when you're only touching the ball once every five minutes," said McGrady.

And there you go. The effort qualified as both the straw that broke the camel's back for many Houston fans and the smoking gun for his critics.

From there, McGrady and the team went in opposite directions.

T-Mac took two weeks off to get in shape, proclaimed that he was now back to his normal self, then two weeks later announced on his own through ESPN, without so much as a Post-It note to the Rockets organization, that he was shutting it down to undergo microfracture surgery. When McGrady did show up at the arena, he was booed regularly by the Houston faithful.

Meanwhile, the team won 22 of their final 30 games, broke the first round playoff curse, pushed the eventual champions to 7 games and endeared themselves to the city by establishing an identity as a fearless, hard-working squad that never surrenders.

Now, just 6 months later, this same franchise is supposed to trumpet the return of the anti-Cal Ripken, the embodiment of apathy, excess and entitlement, as their offensive leader -- a forced marriage that now seems a painfully awkward fit.

This shouldn't be about hate, love, payback, insurance or rehab. It's also not about his talent, which isn't in question. It's about being confronted with the reality of what last season confirmed. It's about having a clear knowledge now that McGrady is not a guy you can count on. We know this now – we’ve put it to the test.

I've been a diehard Rockets fan for as long as I can remember, and I've often said I would EBay my soul for a few extra 'W's. As fate would have it, that's exactly what it would feel like I'd be doing by welcoming back McGrady with open arms and pretending the Toronto game just never happened.

>> Comments on Story

 

LOL.. maybe some fans aren't as pissed off as others. Could he have handled the situation better? Yes. Could the Rockets have handled the situation better? Yes. It goes both ways. To crucify him and stomp on his Rockets grave is just silly.