never said he was a smart basketball player, but you said he was a ball hog, that was the product of the offense, at least in the beginning.
Oh how I remember the early 2000s offense. He'd just dribble it out then jack it up with 4 on the clock. Rinse and repeat, sub 500 seasons galore. At least we got Yao from that offense. This new morey ball style just makes us adequate.
I wouldn't say either player was lazy. Francis played hard every time out for us, but something never clicked that allowed him to merge his athleticism with some basketball sense. Once his knees went, that was it. McGrady wasn't lazy either. Just because he had a smooth effortless-looking style doesn't mean that he wasn't playing hard. You don't get to be as good a player as he was without actually putting the work in. And as ugly as the ISO offense was during the Francis years : Steve Francis Cuttino Mobley Shandon Anderson Mo Taylor Hakeem/Kelvin Cato that lineup won 45 games in the NBA, in a year where 7 teams in the West won 50 games. And that lineup is TERRIBLE. With the benefit of hindsight that lineup had no business winning 25 games.
so t-mac leading the rockets to a 22-game win streak = lazy player? lol @ how ungrateful some of you are. and you call yourself a rockets fan?! smh.
Hmm. Well Francis was lazy on his rehab but didn't mentally check out of games like Tmac. He was just really really basketball stupid with his decision making. Tmac certainly wasn't physically lazy with his body but he was mentally lazy checking out of some games. Dunno. In their primes they were both awesome players to watch, fault and all.
I always thought steve loved the alcohol. maybe it was a combo? Who knows, either way the dude was so arrogant in his basketball abilities...he never thought he needed to improve any aspect of his game.
The impression I got of Francis was that he loved the game and playing for the Rockets but that he was very immature and not very bright. He wasn't lazy in the sense that he didn't really care but that he didn't think things through. T-Mac was a much smarter player and in some ways more mature than Francis but he would not care and just half-ass things because he believed his talent would pull him through in the end. It often seemed like Francis was trying to do much, while T-Mac would often do too little.
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=90087 "I was slacking off," McGrady told Sports Illustrated of his play last season, his last of four years in Orlando before his offseason trade to the Houston Rockets, which was no real revelation for those who witnessed his play. Typical of Me-Mac, he also blamed such an egregious act of non-professionalism on others. "How can you play if you don't trust your teammates?" he also told SI in their January 10th edition. There were other self-incriminating comments in what will forever be an infamous interview. So the boos and the signs were out in full force.
Geez, I was a big fan of franchise and tmac, and now lebron I picked the worst players possible to be fans of. Its a good thing that Hakeem is my all time favorite or I would just give up.....
