[GRANTLAND] Bill Simmons: The Unfortunate Tale of T-Mac

Great piece! Really the penultimate piece on Mcgrady if there ever was one!

 

terrific article...good stuff...

 

That was not a bad team. They had T-Mac, Yao, Sura(when he was still healthy), Wesley, James, Deke, and Jon Barry. That group won 45 of their final 65 games of the season. Now, was that roster better than the 2005 Mavs? Absolutely not. But they also came home with a 2-0 lead and were up double figures in the 2nd half of Game 3. They should've won that series regardless of what the refs intentionally did to Yao(and unintentionally to Barry in Game 5).

Fast forward to 2007. Now you wanna talk about a crappy roster. That was basically a team with no bench. The starters were fine. T-Mac, Yao, Shane, Chuck Hayes, and Rafer. But the only other players who saw any real time in that series were Deke, Luther Head, and Juwan Howard. Still, the Rockets had home court advantage against a young, inexperienced Jazz team that sucked on the road. They should've won that series too. And I don't know what angers me more to this day. Spotting Utah a nearly 20-point lead in Game 7 that sapped all of the Rockets energy coming back from or making no effort to take Game 6 when they were down only a couple buckets in the 4th quarter and the Jazz were playing like garbage.

2008 is the one year I'll cut T-Mac some slack. He had a great season as did the entire team and they finally had a quality bench after adding Scola, Landry, Bobby Jackson, and Aaron Brooks. But the Yao injury was devastating. Sure, the additional 10 wins tacked onto what was eventually a 22 game winning streak helped soften the blow, but I think we all knew this team would need some luck in getting past Utah in Round 1(despite having home court advantage again) and then had no chance against a team like the Lakers or Celtics if they somehow advanced that far.

Ultimately I view T-Mac's tenure with the Rockets as one of a series of great moments(13 points in 35 seconds, the 22 game winning streak) juxtaposed with a series of major playoff disappointments(blowing the 2-0 lead against the Mavs, blowing Games 6 and 7 against Utah). It's frustrating in the end to be forced to sit here and ask ourselves "what if?" as long suffering Rockets fans, but this is certainly not the first nor will it be the last NBA franchise to go through that experience. Let's just hope the Harden-Howard era isn't derailed by similar injuries.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/Real_T_Mac/statuses/373656244877156352

 

He never should have left Toronto. It's surprising Vince couldn't convince him to stay.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Great article <a href="https://twitter.com/BillSimmons">@BillSimmons</a> <a href="http://t.co/90oQ7Dowur">http://t.co/90oQ7Dowur</a></p>&mdash; Tracy McGrady (@Real_T_Mac) <a href="https://twitter.com/Real_T_Mac/statuses/373655289850896384">August 31, 2013</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Hell of an article actually.. Great job <a href="https://twitter.com/BillSimmons">@BillSimmons</a> <a href="http://t.co/90oQ7Dowur">http://t.co/90oQ7Dowur</a></p>&mdash; Tracy McGrady (@Real_T_Mac) <a href="https://twitter.com/Real_T_Mac/statuses/373656244877156352">August 31, 2013</a></blockquote>
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Nice article. I don't see the Rox retiring his jersey, but for a healthy span, he was an NBA elite. I was so excited when we traded for him. Too bad it didn't work out, but that's life, in and out of sports.

 

McGrady never caught a break. Wow. What about the season he decided to shut it down? The season where we were the only team to take the Lakers to 7? The season where McGrady quit on us. That was his break. That was his lucky moment. BS, you ever hear the expression "luck rewards the prepared"? McGrady was lucky, he was very lucky, he just wasn't prepared. Ask JVG if you need more reference points. Great piece of revisionist history if you ask me.

 

He still hasn't come back from that, at least not enough to be tmac. What exactly would a break do for him at that point? His body was done early in 08-09 and his knee was already showing signs of trouble the previous season.

 

I am always happy to defend T-Mac as far as his playoff record goes. He's always stepped up his game in the postseason, his Magic teams were undoubtably built to lose, his Houston teams were nailed by injury ('05 Juwan, '08 Yao, '09 T-Mac) at the worst possible times. In his time with Houston he essentially did not make it to the playoffs with a healthy starting five a single time ('07 was an exception, but obviously Yao was still a little hampered).

I liked Tracy, I was a big fan of Tracy. To me there's a pretty sharp divide between May '08 Tracy and October '08 Tracy and that second Tracy is dead to me. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate most of T-Mac's Houston career.

Anyways, aside from the unnecessary and unsupported shot at Yao, I really enjoyed this article.

 

Great read...difficult having to re-live all the what-ifs that come with T-Mac...but I think our collective perception of him will improve with time due to perspective pieces like this. Really enjoyed the insight from JVG and Rivers.

 

G-damn that was depressing. I liked the read, but I do think he should have kept it a little more real with Tracy's shortcommings. I mean the worst thing he said is that he was not wired to be a leader. There was certainly more going on with McGrady than what was written here.

The part that stuck with me was:

 

Great article with insight.
Now I am thinking to get his book, The Book of Basketball!

 

It is a really interesting read. It has a it's huge share of Celtic homer-ism (He brings up the Rockets a fair amount also) but if you can get past that, it is really a good read.

 

Learn from the mistakes of others.

 

you seem to be confusing personal reasons for medical reasons. Nobody would willingly derail a 20 million per year career for no understandable reason.

 

Juwan Howard sucks. Crazy to think that people were saying, if we only had Howard, we would have beat Dallas.

That team sucked, but was fun to watch. Tracy put up numbers. I thought we were going places.


I don't think he is going to make it to the hall of fame unfortunately. I think playoffs do matter. But for a span of his career, he was arguably the top player or near top player in the league.

Gale Sayers made it in football hall as the running back for four or five years.


I'm not mad about what happened at the end of his Rockets tenure. It happened to me as an adult. I get what goes on. If this happened to me as a kid, I'd have so much problems with it.

 

Was really excited to get him, but what he did in that toronto game haunts me. "Say it ain't so." Was all I could think. But here's another question for you folks. Who gave up first Tracy Mcgrady or the Rockets organization on him.

 

Great read, and probably the fairest representation I've read of McGrady. Immense talent, never much of a supporting cast (and the good teammates he did have had the same injury issues he did) ...but also his own worst enemy, and not the 'leader' type in any sense of the word. Just an unfortunate combination.

But man, when he was in his prime...hell of a player to watch.

 

Good lord do you guys overrate the crap out of the Toronto game.