[SI.com] Weekly Countdown: Gauging T-Mac

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Weekly Countdown: Gauging T-Mac
5 Views of Tracy McGrady


Swingman Tracy McGrady shot a career-low 38.8 percent from the field this season.Greg Nelson/SI

5. Stars are high maintenance. I was on the phone last month with Pacers president Larry Bird, who was telling me what everyone already knows: To win a championship, you need an elite player.

"Here's the thing about guys like you,'' I said. "You spend all of your time trying to get that special player. It's all you think about it. And then after you get him, your life has never been so miserable.''

I named all of the stars in the NBA. Kobe Bryant turned Mitch Kupchak's hair a brighter shade of white while insisting that the Lakers trade him a couple of summers ago. Everyone who works for the Cavaliers is scared to death that LeBron James may walk out on their marriage next year, and the same goes for Dwyane Wade in Miami and Chris Bosh in Toronto. Kevin Garnett, the ultimate team player, is high maintenance in his demands that everything be done just so per his meticulous routine, and so on and so forth goes the list. The only star who comes across as low maintenance is Tim Duncan, though I'm sure even he has his moments.

"It's true,'' Bird replied. "I remember when I was starting out with the Celtics, Dave Cowens told me, 'You know what your problem is? You don't b**** enough.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You're never going to be a great player in this league unless you b****. All of the great players b****. They b**** about their hotel room, they b**** about practice, they b**** about the food, their shoes, everything. If you want to be a great player, you've got to learn to b****.' ''

It's a bottom-line league that way. The more a player produces, the more right he has to make demands and complain. That dynamic has a lot to do with why no one appears to be giving Tracy McGrady the benefit of the doubt lately. He hasn't won enough to be worth the trouble.

4. On trying to play through pain. The visitors' locker room last month in Boston was empty of all the players but one. The bright red numbers on the wall read 12 minutes, 48 seconds and counting down to the opening tip as McGrady sat on a padded trainer's table in beige slacks and a light sweater. His Houston Rockets were warming up on the court for the most important game of their season thus far. McGrady was still in the locker room, unchanged from his everyday clothes, explaining why he wasn't out there with his teammates.

"It's not a constant pain,'' he said that night in early January, glancing at his sore left knee. "It's just certain movements that I make, it gives me a sharp pain and it sets me back a little bit mentally. I'm like, Damn, I don't want to make that move again.

"That's what I'm experiencing right now,'' he went on, "and as far as being able to elevate off this one leg, mentally I'm having problems with that. It's a challenge within myself as far as trying to push myself through it, and just knowing that's how I'm going to get out of it, by just pushing it.''

He knew he needed to play through it. But he never had been in this position before.

"No, never,'' he said. "I played 11 years and this is the first surgery I ever had. First surgery. It's tough. Tough.''

The doctor opened him up last May to repair his shoulder and knee. The arthroscopic surgery to remove loose bodies from his left knee was considered minor, but there was nothing minor about the unanticipated pain that lingered throughout this season. His ability to leap had vanished. He was like a fastball pitcher with a dead arm.

After McGrady was unable to complete a breakaway dunk Feb. 9 against the Bucks, he and the Rockets agreed to seek further medical opinions. On Tuesday, he underwent season-ending microfracture surgery that will sideline him for six to 12 months.

During our conversation, I recalled what Kevin McHale has long said, that a player is never quite the same after surgery.

"I look at some of the guys who have had surgery,'' said McGrady, nodding. "Like Amar'e [Stoudemire] had surgery. He still has that explosion, but he's not even close to where he was before that.''

Stoudemire underwent microfracture surgery, the same procedure that McGrady endured this week. McGrady submitted to the operation in hopes of rescuing his career at age 29. But what if he is unable to recover his athleticism?

"You've got to find other ways to be productive, and that's what I'm trying to do right now,'' he was saying in January. "I'm not as explosive. I'm not my old self, but I still pass the ball and I still will find a way to be effective on the basketball court to make us a better team.''

3. His best chance. This was the supposed to be the year McGrady would lead his team deep into the playoffs. He has won an NBA scoring title, he has been an All-Star seven times, and there was that period a few years ago when a lot of people were suggesting he was better than Kobe. But McGrady's teams have earned home-court advantage once in his career -- that last year, when center Yao Ming was out for the season and point guard Rafer Alston was sidelined during the Rockets' opening-round loss in six games to Utah.

The Rockets responded by trading for Ron Artest as a third star to provide defense and toughness alongside McGrady and Yao. In the most serendipitous environment, they might have contended for the championship. But only Yao has achieved good health this season (after three previous years ruined by injury). Artest and Shane Battier missed chunks of the early season, and McGrady was never his old self.

McGrady has been criticized all season. He was averaging a nine-year low of 15.6 points while shooting a career-worst 38.8 percent when he opted for surgery this week. Why couldn't he play through the pain as so many other stars have done over the years? Why hasn't his talent ever produced success in the playoffs?

"We're underachieving, and when you underachieve when the expectations are put so high up on you, you get criticized,'' McGrady said with a sly smile last month. "If it comes -- the criticism -- so what? I enjoy doing what I do. It's made me into a global icon. There's no way criticism is going to make me go hide in a closet and go boo and cry. There's just no way.''

Those kinds of statements only lead to more criticism. McGrady knows this. He says them anyway.

2. Are the Rockets better without him? It depends on the version of McGrady. Without question, a healthy T-Mac would make a better team of the Rockets. A one-legged McGrady would still be helpful because he is an excellent passer and playmaker, in addition to his threat as a scorer who demands coverage.

But if McGrady's availability had remained unpredictable throughout the season? Had he continued to drift in and out of the lineup, he would not have helped the Rockets.

They are 17-6 without him this season -- including a big win that night last month in Boston as he watched from the bench -- and they enter the final two months hoping to establish an identity around the defense of Artest and Battier with Yao guarding the basket. The Rockets stifled Cleveland 93-74 on Thursday to extend their winning streak to six while holding LeBron without an assist for the first time in his career. They've shown a tenacious spirit in playing to their current 37-21 record, and a consistent rotation could enable them to fend off Portland for the No. 4 seed and challenge Denver at No. 3 in the West.

But their hope of winning a championship is doomed as long as McGrady is sidelined or ineffective. As constructed today, the Rockets lack the talent to overcome Kobe's Lakers or the Spurs of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. They can't trade McGrady coming off major knee surgery, which means they are wedded to him until he comes off their books in 2010.

1. Is this all he will ever be? The question becomes whether he will finish as a winner in his 30s, after his barren 20s culminated in two knee surgeries.

The fair point to remember about McGrady is that his most explosive years, in Orlando, were undone by the unfortunate injuries to Grant Hill. Had Hill been at full strength, then those Magic teams undoubtedly would have gone far in the playoffs, and McGrady would be seen in a less skeptical light.

He smiled when asked if he ever found himself questioning what separated him from the champions of his era.

"I haven't been the guy who's been fortunate enough to play with Shaq, to play with Tim Duncan. I always seem to have average teams,'' he said. "You take me back in my Orlando days with Shaq? Come on, there are no questions. You take a healthy me and switch me out with Paul Pierce [on the current Celtics]? There's no question. There's definitely no question.''

I reminded McGrady of a previous conversation we had years ago, when Garnett was being criticized for his failure to win in the playoffs with Minnesota. "I remember that,'' McGrady said. Then he shifted our talk to Garnett's championship with the Celtics last season.

"I don't know if you remember this,'' McGrady said. "But when they won the championship, he had the hat like this [turned sideways] and he looked into the camera and he was like, What are you going to say now? That's what he said. That was about all that criticism that he was taking, and now he was letting everybody know: What are you going to say now? Because you can't say it now -- I'm the best, I'm on the best team in the league.''

Watching the Celtics celebrate on television after his arthroscopic surgery last spring, McGrady swallowed Garnett's message as if it were a personal greeting to him to not give up.

"Now, whether I accomplish that, I don't know,'' he said, his strong right leg swinging from the side of the trainer's table. "But I'm going to bust my ass trying to get there.''