[Ball Don't Lie] Top 10 Small Forwards of the Last Decade

From what I read, Artest and Alston were the ones who had the most tension between them. Alston most likely got on McGrady's case when he saw that Mac wasn't giving 100% effort, but that probably wasn't the first time. Other than that, it seemed like they had a pretty good relationship.

Yes, it is an exaggeration. Artest in Indiana was trying to make rap albums and was getting suspended for 70+ games. You tell me that wasn't a distraction. Dennis Rodman was off wearing wedding dresses. Vince Carter dogged it for an entire year in Toronto then ripped the front office for drafting Bosh. Isaiah Rider was just a knucklehead through and through.

McGrady tried to come back early, failed miserably, then tried a variety of methods to get back to his old self. He got depressed and didn't play with passion. It's a weak excuse and a pathetic show resolve, no doubt. Most cancerous player in the NBA ever? Exaggeration.

 

I would liken the 'tension' between McGrady and Alston to the tension one would feel towards one's teammate at a rec league who would loaf on defense. Yeah, kinda disappointed and kinda pissed off, but nothing to write home about. Artest's beef with Alton substantially greater than the supposed tension between Mac and Alston. Kinda weird that during the year of the most cancerous NBA player ever, there was a teammate who was arguably more of a distraction.

So basically, it was just Artest being Artest that got him suspended. That's fine though, right? No. It's still a huge distraction and whatever his reasons were, he was still a cancerous presence. But I guess requesting for a leave of absence just so that he could produce his horrible rap albums is excusable as well. After all, it's just Artest channeling his creative side, right?

You can interpret it however you want to, but McGrady did come back early from surgery because he had to. He played through a lot of pain in the Utah series, and I doubt that he would have been much better even with the rehab he could have done better. As leebigez always points out, why didn't Battier return earlier? Wasn't his ankle surgery routine as well? McGrady had two surgeries, both more serious than the diplomat's surgery.

You make a lot of assumptions and state them a facts. He rationally decided to screw up the team's lineups because he felt like it? How about the fact that his knee would pretty much detoriate after a game? How about the fact that despite the structure of the knee not getting any worse, it wasn't getting any better either. It should be noted that the Rockets didn't seem to have any problems with him getting microfracture surgery, just with the unprofessional way he went about it.

I think that you have a lot of good points and I respect your opinion. Additionally, I'm probably a biased myself because I actually like McGrady a lot as a player. I'm sure McGrady alienated a lot of people last year, and caused people who didn't like him to begin with to increase their disdain towards him, so I understand where this is coming from.

Either way, there's a place to discuss this and it's not in this thread.