The thing was, McGrady WAS given his chance to adjust. He showed up, couldn't play at a star level.....but refused to accept that. He demanded to remain THE primary option scoring, gave up all defensive effort to save himself for the other end, and shot us out of games with his dance-dance-contested-22-footer game. I got burned at the end of the preseason for suggesting he should take a diminished role in the offense and be a "bonus player" for the Rockets, allowing Scola, Artest, and Yao to take the pressure off him. Unfortunately, he subscribed to Chris Webber's "I ain't no role player" magazine and wrecked havoc on the entire team. It WASN'T about McGrady not being 100%. It had EVERYTHING to do with McGrady hijacking the season instead of letting the most talented cast he's ever had take center stage. Can he be humble enough to surrender his status as The Man? Or are we going to get a repeat of last year? A repeat of what Detroit just went through with Allen Iverson refusing to adjust to no longer being the alpha and omega of his team?
Substitute "Better Defense" with "Better Talent", then the article is right on. The Rockets defense under JVG was head and shoulders above the rest of the league.
Eddie Johnson got it right on each point. People who keep wishing for and calling for a "healthy McGrady" need to account for the things mentioned here instead of just looking at his boxscore numbers. I for one an glad we don't here anymore of this kind of talk: "It's McGrady's team...", "It's Yao's team..." All of that has been rendered irrelevant now. It's the ROCKETS, they're a team, and they don't belong to any individual (besides Les Alexander). I think it's the product of Adelman's style (The Kings ... had Bibby, Webber, Peja, but did not stand out as anyone's "team"). I'm a great fan of this approach. It reflected in this series when Rick was asked about fronting and getting the ball to Yao, and he was like, "if we still score and win, who cares?"
"Do the Rockets want to see if he understands the adjustment he would have to make next year and do they want to deal with it?" The question is, like with AI, what team(s) might be interested in allowing for the adjustment(s) and/or non-adjustment(s) to be effected. Clips? GSW? The value TMac has is maximized by his expiring. What is it worth - to the Rox and to the other team? (Braon Davis? Elton Brand? [my hope; along with Dre in an SnT] Ellis and Crawford, preferably Biedrins?)
t-mac has a small window - until the trading deadline - to make an adjustment. I will see what happens.
good article. i know we're still in the playoffs but i cant help but wonder what pieces we could get for tmac if we decided to trade him.
Tmac has no more window to show himself off. I bet you bottom dollar that Rockets were looking to trade Tmac before the playoff, until he annouced that he would be out due to injury. No team would pay for a player worth 22 mil to be sitting for whole year. You guys have no clue what Tmac is worth to us and to the rest of the NBA when it comes to the 2010 FA market. Think about now that we have 22 mils to spend with players like Wade, Lebron, Chris Paul...etc available. We got one of the biggest draw with Yao and economy from China. With the finanical market we are in, NBA players are certainly looking at it long and hard. We may not land lebron (if he wins all the way), but Wade, or Chris Paul may not be impossible. CP3 is not happy with the team i can guarantee you that and Wade is the same way.
I don't think I've ever read an article so much on target in my life. It's like Eddie went inside my head and wrote everything I wanted in a much better way LOL..
I personally would like to keep TMac and his expiring contract. The Rockets will be a big player in next year's free agent class. But I would rather see TMac in a lesser role or should I say to be a role player offff the bench. Now I truely believe that our starting 5 is much better not because we advanced to the 2nd round but because of their balance, ball movement, and defense. If TMac will accept the role of being our 6th man next year like Ginobili and Terry, the Rockets will be the team to beat. After the microfracture surgery, I don't think he will be able to get back to where he used to be (I hope I'm wrong)... BUT first things first, we need to resign Ron Artest and Von Wafer in a multiyear deal and also sign a center that can help Yao...
i think our team would be better if tmac was healthy and playing i think we can challenge the lakers if we had tmac AND mutombo we need another big body... will dorsey ever pan out?
I agree with you. To a point. Without McGrady, consistently, the Rox have been more synergistic. Or, they have been synergistic - not more because that is his 'chemistry' problem. Dorsey? Interesting that Memphis supposedly really really wanted him but apparently passed during the Lowery trade scenario. Thus, will he pan out? Fools gold, I suspect.
The article is nothing more than a bandwagon. This year The Rockets became much better and whole western became much weaker. How many players in this series score 20+ in a game? 5 players. Rockets have much more weapons. In the first series with Jazz, In game 4 only 4 players scores. Hayes was the starter, Head and JH is the first 2 leaving the benchs. Now Hayes is 9th/10th player hardly playing. head is #12th being cut. JH is gone for a long time. In the last game of Dallas series, Tmac and yao scored 60, the rest of team scored 16. Tmac had his problem, But it's not fair to blame Tmac only on Rocket's previous failure.
I think it's highly likely that the organization has no intention of trading Tracy until at least they take a look at him at the beginning of next year and sees if he's recovered and if he can still gel with the team. It's not an auto-ship out for Tracy because of how much his contract is worth and admittedly how much talent he has if he was fully healthy, so I don't know why everyone acts like the Rockets are super eager to just send him off.
I'm kinda leaning that way too. If we try and trade him, I'm not sure what kind of players we would target. Assuming we keep Wafer and Artest, what position do we try to upgrade? DM has said repeatedly he thinks Brooks is our starting PG, I don't think we can upgrade much above scola's 15 and 10 at the power forward spot, and we have two great swingmen in their prime. I think we give our young guys another year to mature and gel, let McGrady's contract expire and the following season we determine whether our young guys will blossom enough to make us contenders (in which case we use our money to keep them on the team) or if we need to go after a big free agent. Morey has shown he can make vast improves with limited cap space. Can you imagine what he could do if we actually gave him something to work with? Leslie Alexander needs to sign Morey to a lifetime contract.
Exactly. Not only did McGrady not bring the defense that he needed to in order to keep the team defense solid but his presence hindered Ron Artest's production and probably would have completely prevented the emergence of Von Wafer as well as stunted the growth production of Brooks and Lowry. People just look at his stats and think he would just plug those in to the team and it would be the current Rocket team PLUS McGrady's contributions. It doesn't work that way in real games.
