**Official McGrady/Pistons 2010 Regular Season Thread**

It's not that simple, and off-ball movement is VERY VERY tiring.

 

It is that simple, you move into space, when your opponent turns his head.

You make yourself an available target for a pass.

DD

 

He has looked so much better then he was expected. The most important thing is he is getting alot more lift now and has made his las 11 of the 16 shots. He is pretty much the best playmaker on that team and by mid-season will be the best player.

 

mac hurt again, but it's the ankle

lol when he screamed, the entire arena sighed loudly

 

Right when I opened the stream, he was on the ground.

Wow, what happened?

 

right ankle shannon brown landed on his right ankle and pinned it aginst the ground. Good drive by t-mac too bad for this. But hes back on the court now to shoot so it looks alright

 

kobe giving hm some love, but he's smiling so he just needs to walk it off or maybe the game off to rest it up

 

lmao so fragile, he's probably done for the season. smh microfracture ankle surgery sigh

 

So unfortunate

Now the right ankle???

That's the only foot he jumps off. Awful

 

some players are just prone to injuries. hopefully he just misses this game and bounce back. he's been making too much progress

 

Damn T-Mac going hard to the rack..Felt sorry for him when he went down there..hopefully he can get back.

 

His next game will be Sunday but come on, he finally is starting to gain some confidence and now he suffers another setback which will kill his mentality.

 

it is in fact a right ankle sprain return is 50-50 for tonight..must not be that bad hes walking around on it already.

 

Off ball movement is right within the flow of other players. But moving for the sake of moving actually is counter-productive.

You never have 5 guys in motion all at once, that's asking for turnovers galore.

Sometimes sitting in the corner waiting is the best thing a player can do. Sometimes their job is just to space the floor and keep a defender honest.

 

mcgrady to check back in right now

 

You know what?

I've watched Tracy McGrady off and on for the past couple of seasons....

...and I'm actually happy I thought so highly of him while he was here in Houston.

It didn't seem like misplaced sentiment before. It's been nothing but verified now.

McGrady was certainly tapped to be more Steve Francis or Allen Iverson than potentially Grant Hill. He had enough excuses, real or imagined. That's what's expected of him, And that's what so many sleuths and detectives concluded would happen: McGrady would ride off into the sunset with a whimper, not a bang.

McGrady was NEVER (at least as a Houston Rocket) a coward or a cancer or a quitter, in my own opinion. And I know I just asked somebody to que the legendary Toronto game from 2008, so feel free.

He was never a dumb or selfish player. "Reinventing" yourself is what players who refuse to acknowledge their limitations after so long a time, somehow wishing to continue to dictate the terms of engagement, and set themselves above the team, refuse to even attempt.

The game is never secondary to any player. You play the game well, and you have a chance. And once you learn to play the game well, you never UNlearn it.

The only thing Tracy McGrady needed to do, to me, was to become PART of a team. In the first few weeks of McGrady's stint in Houston, he was as receptive to that idea as he ever was. Jeff Van Gundy had McGrady's full attention, and complete deference. While I don't fault Van Gundy for trusting, believing and relying on ability so prodigious as McGrady's, he did McGrady no favors ignoring his temperment. Poor teams failing would, of course, be blamed on McGrady, insulating so many other things that HAVE to be addressed before a team can seek to win at this level...and even still, McGrady cannot escape his own responsibility in those "failures"....

...but the fact is that McGrady isn't learning HOW to play within a TEAM concept, to me. Not as much as he's learning that he CAN.

Because he isn't routinely one of the two best players on the floor every night, and such is not expected or demanded of him, McGrady has to be willing to play in a way that benefits everybody. He doesn't have to start a play and finish it at the same time. He doesn't have to pass the ball to himself and make shots. He doesn't have to bounce around the court and defend two or three positions or draw three defenders to give open shots to guys miss them.

Only a truly great player can offer your team stability. McGrady can't ever be seen as a "great" player because great players win games, at least in the sense of WHEN games are supposedly won.

But he's closer to being great than anybody outside of the league would ever acknowledge. And has been for quite some time. And won't be appreciated until after he's done.

Humility is perhaps the final obstacle to clear in competitive sports, to me. The game is the game. No one is larger than the game. No one can be measured in a vacuum. And no one wins alone.

Such is only EVER expected of a precious few. That such expectations were ever heaped on someone so "mentally weak" as Tracy McGrady says more about the quality of his character than we think we know.

That McGrady failed to approach anyone's expectations of him on average, says that he is very much like the rest of us at the end of the day.

And that a perennial "loser" like McGrady, would keep trying to play....trying to improve....trying to adjust...trying to win....with certainly no clear hope NOW of doing anything more than making himself look foolish or proving those that hate and despise him correct about what kind of blight on humanity he is....

...won my respect a long time ago, no matter how predictable the outcome of the endeavor may have seemed to be to anybody.

I get that "trying" isn't "doing". Results are what counts. Winning is what matters. I agree with all of that.

When you beat your head against a brick wall and "fail" as often as Tracy McGrady has, and still come back and do it again and again and again.....

...to me, you're either very brave or very stupid.

Tracy McGrady has always been far more glue than a Shane Battier. Character is character. Nice thing to have, all things being equal. But even glue, improperly handled, makes a very nice mess.

In Allen Iverson's mind, a cheering throng of fans in Turkey is winning. In Tracy McGrady's mind, it seems, taking a huge cut in pay and ego and playing yourself back to productivity when there's really no reason to is how you win.

Love him or hate him (or in McGrady's case, "hate him or hate him some more"), this was who McGrady, despite his baseball aspirations and off-the-cuff interviewing guffaws, always was, at least with the Rockets—whether it's any fun to admit it or not.

And this is always who he should have been.

 

This.

 

I saw few plays from this game, and on that drive when he sprained that ankle he looked fast.

But still, 1/4 from the line and 3 points is pretty pathetic.

 

Nicely said, Mcgrady has received far to much scrutiny for failures that shouldn't be all on him.

Hope he can keep improving and recovering.

 

Tracy McGrady has never been about winning, he has always been about fan adoration and Tmac.

While the post was well written, it missed the target about motivation and hubris.

DD