McGrady: If traded from Orlando, Rockets are first choice

T-Mac isn't going to leave Orlando.


He is using his pending expiring contract as a way to bend the Orlando Magic to his will with the roster. They will come to a compromise. Just watch.

 

That is a very astute comment.

 

There isn't much the Magic can do. They are hamstrung w/ TMac and Hill's contracts. They don't have many quality players to trade either. Okafor isn't worth that much either.

 

Actually, I thought about using the TE instead of Spoon, but I'm not sure which Orlando would rather have. I'd love to keep Spoon as our backup PF. He works hard & can both, score & rebound.

 

What, he is going to force the team to improve itself. It's devious, but you know, it's just crazy enough to work!

 

You mean with Kidd, Marbury, & Iverson?

 

i think if steve went to orlando his numbers would increase quite a lot. and he would still get a starting spot.

 

Ahead of whom?

Iverson, Kidd, James and Marbury will be ahead of him, and if you want to shift someone up, they've already got the annual NBA vote getter ( ?) at the small forward spot.

 

There's also Dwayne Wade, Paul Pierce, Michael Redd, and Rip Hamilton that he's competing against.

Getting a starting spot in the East is much more difficult than in the West. A lot would depend on how well Francis can get the Magic to play. If it's significantly better than Mcgrady could, Steve would have a good shot at starting. If it's the same as it was last season, Steve may not even make it on to the All-star team.

 

If there's anything to this (I'm too lazy to read all 7 pages), I'll bet Scoop Berman will have something to say about it tonight on Fox 26.

His show comes on at 9:30 tonight.

 

All I am saying is that anyone who thinks that trading Francis away will make this team YAO's are really smoking something...

Either your motive is to get another go to guy, or it is to make Yao your go to guy... this trade isnt going to make both of those things happen... Its like 2 positive ends on a magnet, they just wont stay together.

 

Here's an ESPN article on TMac's bad back from two years ago:

Friday, October 4, 2002
T-Mac's back feels better ... for now

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Here are five observations of the Orlando Magic from training camp:


A bad back didn't stop Tracy McGrady from averaging 30.8 points a game in the playoffs.
1. As with Grant Hill's left ankle, Tracy McGrady's back is worlds better now than it was a year ago. Of course, as with Hill's left ankle, the Magic will be privately worried about McGrady's back every day of every season, no matter how well McGrady seems to have progressed with the help of an Orlando back specialist. "Once you have a bad back, you have a bad back," Magic coach Doc Rivers said. "You don't get a good back the next day. I think the difference between Tracy this year and last year is that he understands that." McGrady, by all accounts, has been vigilant all summer in his rehabilitation, which involves a special machine that stretches T-Mac's vertebrae.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1441197&type=columnist

 

dunno if this has been posted...
http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/columnstoryS0530MAPETE.htm




Magic should trade impatient McGrady

BY PETER KERASOTIS
FLORIDA TODAY



Trade Tracy.

Trade him now.

I don't know what the future is for the Orlando Magic franchise, but the higher the sun hoists itself this summer the more it casts shadows of doubt that Tracy McGrady will be a part of it.

Time for T-Mac to go?
Magic star Tracy McGrady can opt out of his contract following next season and says that he will have an answer about his future in Orlando for the Magic by July. Should the Magic trade T-Mac?


Yes. He appears unhappy in Orlando. Let's build a new team.
No. Keep McGrady. He's the centerpiece of a new beginning in Orlando.
Who cares? I just like to watch the NBA and the cool teams that visit Orlando.


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What we've witnessed since Orlando's season mercifully ended (another week and it would've been euthanized) is a verbal shoving match, with the Magic doing the shoving. Pushing the issue, if you will.

Friday, in an interview with FLORIDA TODAY, McGrady shoved back. He did it by saying that the Magic winning the lottery and securing the NBA Draft's top pick does little to convince him that next season the franchise is going to be much better than atrocious again.

"I just can't see going another couple of years losing and waiting on players to develop," T-Mac said. "I just don't think I can do that. If we can't change the team this summer, I just think the best thing would be for me to move on."

John Weisbrod, the puck-headed Ivy League whiz kid who is feeling his way around being an NBA general manager like a blind man feeling his way around a strange room, started all this.

Whether or not you want to say Weisbrod issued McGrady an ultimatum is really splitting semantics. What Weisbrod did tell McGrady, and made public through the obliging media, is that he wants Orlando's only superstar to decide before this upcoming season whether he wants to stay or go.

McGrady is scheduled for free agency after the 2004-05 season, and the Magic understandably don't want a repeat of Shaquille O'Neal, circa 1996, when the big man left for Left Coast and Orlando was left holding an empty bag.

Weisbrod was being candid -- which, to his credit, is refreshing from someone in a position where candor is an endangered species.

But when the Magic won the lottery jackpot and revelry was in order, Weisbrod instead chose rhetoric when asked about McGrady.

What's interesting in rereading Weisbrod's comments is that he pretty much said the same thing T-Mac said a day later. When asked if securing the top pick would make any difference with McGrady, Weisbrod replied, "I don't think it has any relevance. I would consider this somewhat of a non-factor to the Tracy McGrady situation."

A follow-up question once again invoked Weisbrod's staunch stance that he will have McGrady traded or signed before the season starts. "We will bring this thing to some kind of closure before the ball goes in the air to start next season," he intoned.

My guess is that, barring a blockbuster trade involving that top pick, McGrady will be traded. I'm also guessing that it's a blockbuster trade the Magic are now pursuing with fervor. Weisbrod, after all, is clearly enamored with the options the top pick gives him rather than who they could draft with that pick.

Through this whole process, and over this past year, we've learned a lot about McGrady. Adversity does that. It crystallizes who people really are.

Take Kobe Bryant. Whether or not you've convicted him in the court of public opinion, you can't deny that neither that court nor the judicial court has hindered what he's done on the basketball court. The man is, if anything, an incredible specimen of mental toughness.

What we've learned about McGrady, though, is that there is a lot of quit in him. When the team stumbled to a 1-5 start, Tracy was in a tizzy, openly contemplating retirement and actually saying this:

"There, for a minute, I was out of it and just really frustrated. I didn't want to play basketball anymore, and I was ready to give it up right then and there. Mentally, I was just drained. I was looking at it as another year of having to do a lot on the court for my team, and mentally it just got to me."

Poor baby.

And this from a guy who makes more than $13 million a year and who, just a few weeks earlier, was anointed the team captain, the honor coming complete with a silly little "C" sewn on his jersey.

Then, when the season wound down, McGrady shut it down, taking the last nine games off with tendinitis in his knee.

Willis Reed, he isn't.

T-Mac also has chronic back problems. Only 25, that has to be a long-term concern, especially in light of McGrady's overall toughness, or lack thereof.

If McGrady is truly a Hall of Fame franchise player, then you wonder how the Magic could win only 21 games with him. That never happened with Michael Jordan, even when he played on some truly awful Chicago Bulls teams early in his career. Look what LeBron James did for a moribund Cleveland Cavaliers franchise this past season, almost entirely by himself.

LeBron wants to build a championship-caliber team in Cleveland, just like Jordan did in Chicago and Kevin Garnett is doing now in Minnesota. It took Jordan and Garnett years, as it will LeBron. Those guys are willing to do time without so much as a whine.

But T-Mac doesn't want to work and wait simultaneously. It's not his idea of multitasking. Instead of building a winner, he wants to go to a winner. Now. It is a quitter's mindset and a loser's mentality, the product of a weak resolve. It probably has something to do with why the Magic lost almost three times as many games as they won this past season. T-Mac's constant harangues about having to do it all aren't exactly what you want out of someone who is supposed to be your team captain.

But that's Tracy.

The Magic should accommodate him.

They should trade Tracy.

Trade him now.

 

I'm intrigued by Feigan's suggestion that we could get Orlando's #1 pick, and take Okafor. Maybe here's how it can happen:

Mobley + Pike + TE
for
Hill + #1 pick

or

Cato + TE
for
Hill + #1 pick

Orlando can get under the salary cap this summer, and this trade would allow them to dump Hill's albatross contract, and get another $6 million under the cap. This would make Orlando serious free agent players, and allow them to sign the big man (Dampier?) that McGrady wants to get him to stay in Orlando. Keep in mind that McGrady's preference is to stay in Orlando, and to obtain veteran help, instead of the #1 pick.

 

kidd is on a downhill slide he scored 0 points in his last game this year.

but steve beating out iverson and marbury is another story. but it would be very close i think.

its funny that we are talking about this. considering just a few things have to happen for this to even become a problem for steve.

 

Wasn't T-Mac known as a pretty good defender when he first got to Orlando?

 

I think with a defensive minded coach and philosophy, will make TMac a really good defender. He has the athletism and length to be very effective on that end of the court. Plus, if Yao progresses like he should, TMac will not have to be a shut down defender because no one will want to drive to the basket on the "Great Wall of China." Just like "The Dream", it wasn't like K. Smith or Maxwell were great defenders, no one wanted to test the great shot blocker inside.

His remarks the past few years show immaturity, but we were all still a little immature at 24-25 yrs. old. He decided to go to ORL. to play along side Hill and build a team to win championships, he then (because of Hill's injury) was thrust into the go to guy's role and I think he wasn't completely ready for it (not to mention how that orginization didn't do anything to improve the talent around him). If he comes here he will once again be the running mate, along with Yao, and not the focal point. I believe he will flourish with a coach like JVG running this team as a TEAM and not the one-on-one ball that is played by alot of teams in the East. He will mature as he gets older and become an even better player because of it.

If we trade for him a pray that JJ is not part of the package. I think we need his experience and veteran leadership to bridge the talent between Yao and TMac and to help TMac become a better overall player by showing him how to prepare, train and take care of his body.

 

no one is saying this.

 

I don't think so either. I believe what people are wanting by this trade, is for T-mac to be T-mac, the consistent all star SG he is. We want em to be a scorer, the main one.
As for Yao, we only want Yao to give us atleast 19-21ppg and 9-11 rpg. And not sure if this is what the majority wants, but what I want from this trade is to cease JVG'S theory that in order for Yao to succeed in the NBA he has to play like a strong overweigth athletic bully who has no shooting touch, no passing skills and no diversity(Shaq). And instead have Yao be the guy that handles the ball, the PG center as it were, once the ball is brought up half court. With T-mac running around with "automatic O threat here" on his jersey, it'll really open up things for Yao. His passing skills, his driving skills, and especially his jumpshooting skills. I'd really like to see Yao used as he's meant to be used. Moving around, through pick n rolls between T-mac and him, and just moving in and out from the paint to the top of the key, especially with T-mac slashing through the lanes.

These two could really REALLY compliment eachother's games. I can see both their games elevating by mixing their two natural style of play with eachother.

 

Exactly. McGrady would be our "goto guy." Yao will be the anchor (inside presence) of the team.

Couple that with Yao's normal development and highlighted by MacBeth's post on how McGrady will change the dynamics of this team. Yao's game will improve just by acquiring McGrady and, let say, Barry...

PG: Barry 6'6" <--or someone comparable
SG: McGrady 6'8"
C: Yao 7'6"

Just those players alone will change the way the offense works. Suddenly, Yao's entry passes become easier, the team's fast breaks become easier, the team FG% improves, and points per game increases.

But when it's all said and done. McGrady is still our "goto guy."