tracy has earned his minutes. he's been more than a good and productive player. it's only logical any NBA coach would gradually increase his minutes to see how much better he can progress. same case with any star coming off an injury. do you think yao will have to earn his minutes? and tracy never said he wanted "big" minutes. he just wants to increase his minutes. he even said he won't expect to play 30 minutes a game until after a month of playing after the first game v. detroit. so an increase to 10 or 11 minutes a game too much to ask for an established player like tracy who's coming off an injury and wanting to see how much load he can handle? adelman didn't think so and he put a CAP on the minutes. if you're a player like tracy, you know what that means: he doesn't want to play me. him staying on the team would only generate more tension so what him and the team did was for the best.
and yet we've seen a VIDEO of him working out at 6AM in the morning with tim grover at the beach in chicago in the summer. and he's 3 months AHEAD of schedule. hmm... from what justice says, tmac shouldn't have been cleared to play if he was a lazy bum.
Obviously they didn't want to play him more or he would have played. The disagreement here is why. Some fans seem to think it was a revenge agenda conspiracy theory to get back at Tracy. It's more reasonable to believe that the Rockets truly did not believe he was capable of playing at the level they wanted him to in the context of the new offense and defense at this time. Maybe eventually he will get back there, but Tracy was not willing to settle for limited minutes in the mean time. If he really didn't want him to play period, why even give him 7 minutes? 7 minutes isn't showcasing him, playing him more minutes would have done that. The most logical conclusion is the 7 minutes was done for Tracy to give him a chance and see how he responded both physically, but also in his attitude. If he kept his mouth shut and kept playing hard I suspect that eventually he could have earned more minutes. Just not as quickly as he wanted. But he expected the minutes right away and let that be known thru the media. They aren't mutually exclusive. You can both have a good workout at 6 am one day which happens to be videoed and not show up on time to another scheduled workout when your boss is going to be there on another which is not being covered by the media. As for being 3 months ahead of schedule, that is part of the difference in opinion between Tmac thinking he is back to his old all star self and the Rockets not agreeing.
I gotta think that his comment is just the excuse he had built in his head all offseason and this was just some type of slip up.
