he should have sat out like shane. tracy could have played on his injury, just like shane could. but shane sat out. i think the team felt pressure to win and thus tracy had to play. he said that to start the season.
Its funny that when we are winning games and shots are falling...the limp is gone. He is either hurt or not...if a knee seriously needs surgery, there is no good day and bad day...it should all be bad days.
"But ... but the sacred BBS oracle of truth Doc Rocket said ... oh feed us with the juicy gossip, oh great Doc Rocket ... thank you, you are so kind. Om nom nom nom" Don't waste your time, friend. For all of its faults, perhaps the fact that this BBS tends to have a really short memory is probably a good thing. If T-Mac returns and somehow becomes a good player again, half of these people probably won't have the capacity to even remember how much hate they spewed his way.
No matter what your opinion about this situation, the fact remains we were all told that Tracy could play through it. That no additional damage could be done. Now here we are, and he's set to have microfracture. Somewhere along the way, somebody messed up. That's clear. It just sickens me that the haters point all their fingers at Tracy, and let their hate for the man fog their sense of sense. Like I said, TMac hasn't handled any of this well, but you can't seriously put all the blame on him for this. Could it be that the doctor really did mess up in this situation, and it's not some conspiracy PR cover up. All signs point to yes. You don't go from point A from where we were prior to the season, to point K, where we are now without something getting messed up along the way. Think about it
I've gone after top surgeon's as well for various things for people I know...most doctors will say the same thing because they all train out of the same book. It is the rare practioner who comes up with original thought and accute analysis when the answer to the problem hasn't been found.
he never had good days. even when he scored 26pts and 30 pts earlier in the year v. the celts and blazers, he moved very poorly. his jumper was just falling. from watching him on TV, there was no way he was healthy. like i said, that limp lasted for more than a month, and even for a few games after he took the initial 2 weeks off.
To repeat: the doctor said maybe the knee wasn't strengthened enough. That is a rehab question, not a procedure question. Microfracture has been the #2 option since April. **"The knee wasn't strengthened enough"=rehab issue.**
Are we watching the same games? By the way, has anyone ever come up with an official source where it says Tmac skimped on the rehab?
ok, the knee wasn't strengthened enough. you can blame that on tmac. but if you're a doctor and you see the knee isn't strengthened enough, tell him to rehab better before he can play. like i said, tell me when was the last time we let a professional player limp for a damn month.
I've always said he should have sat out the beginning of the season. Shane did it. Nobody cared. But the Rockets cared if Tmac sat out b/c that would mean no "Big 3" and no promotional hype for the team; which means less money.
See that's the thing. If you wanna say rehab, ok it was a rehab issue. Your bad TMac. My question is, why didn't the doctors, who had to have checked this guy numerous times this season, say wait a minute, you shouldn't play. They didn't. And here we are. No matter how you slice it, it was a collective botched effort. Anything that remotely resembles that, see: this doctor saying what he said, gets tuned out and brushed off. My gripe that the hate is so ridicously strong that nope, its all TMac's fault., when that clearly isn't the case. It's whatever though. I hope Tmac does come back and full strength next season and the Rockets are succesful. I mean, he is still a Rocket, and we are all Rockets fans after all. I wanna see the tone of this board next year if that is the case. Should be thoroughly amusing.
tracy's done as a rocket. his expiring contract will be worth more than whatever he can bring on the court.
The idea that he rehabbed lazily or didn't do what he was supposed to is a baseless conjecture that has been repeated and hammered home around here so many times that it has turned into some kind of irrefutable fact. One has to be intentionally impervious to the relentless blurring of lines between fact and opinion to actually make sense of what one reads here. Usually that starts with a simple rule: never believe anything unless it is a verbatim quote from an authoritative source. That said, the issue of whether he rehabbed properly or not, as you said, is beside the point. He should never have been cleared to play. Anyone who wasn't watching with hate-colored glasses saw that something was wrong from the beginning. With the exception of a few instances, he never really looked right, not even when he scored 30 points. The problem many people have at this point is that even though the truth is now being revealed about the situation, they've already so deep into their own concocted story lines that every contradiction becomes an experience in simple cognitive dissonance. There is one simple phrase that is almost universally present wherever people experience cognitive dissonance, and it's this one: "It's all a conspiracy."
I admit I have not been a big T-Mac fan lately. But I used to be. Something changed. And it didn't only happen for me, but a lot of people. Maybe "hate" just sprang up in our collective heart. But I think there are other reasons why T-Mac seems to catch more flak than Yao or Battier would. Too many slow defensive reactions, too much time walking on the court, too much time away from the bench and the team, strange declarations. I'm sure T-Mac's knee is not perfect. I'm also sure there are players in the NBA who would play on it all season long.
i'm going to take the worst and say tracy didn't rehab one single bit. let's take that stance. isn't the doctors' job supposed to check whether his knee has strengthened enough to play in an NBA game? this is not a streetball with 6th graders. this is a game v. the best athletes in the world. so tracy says he can play, the doctors just let him play? i'm just sayin... like i said from the beginning, tracy should have sat out like shane did. tracy would probably be playing now pain-free.
there's too much redundance for me to ready every post, but i think y'all are missing what the doc actually said. some of you are assuming Tmac's knee was hurt or damaged or something when the doc cleared him to play, so you assume the doctor means had he waited longer then tmac's knee would have reached 100% ERRRRRRRRRR! What he's saying is Tmac should have done his normal regimen AT THE START of the season, before playing games. The problem was tmac's knee wasn't strong enough when he started playing actual games, so he started playing games and then couldn't rehab his knee specifically since he was busy practicing. Think of it this way, at the time the doc is thinkin the rehab needs a little more time, tmac says i feel good i'm good to go, doc clears him, and it turns out tmac wasn't good to go. So they each get some blame, but i don't see how this damages the doctor's rep as a doctor, which is why he came out and said it. His mistake was believing what his patient was telling him instead of taking more precautions. Remember tests and procedures only do so much, doctors rely on their patients a lot for feedback and use that to come to a conclusion.
there's a reason doctors are doctors and patients are patients. if we let patients determine the course of a medical decision, it's not going to go well. and yes, tests can only do so much and you also rely on patients' feedback. BUT HE WAS LIMPING. FOR A MONTH. what else do you need to know whether his knee was strong enough. from then on, Dr. Clanton should immediately not listen to tracy.
If Tmac didn't rehab right then whoever the Physical Therapist or physician that was looking after him should be fired. I'm a tech at a PT clinic and I try to make sure the patients are doing their exercises right and if they're slacking off I get on them.
