SI T-mac article from rookie year

heya folks i was cleaning out my old desk this past weekend and I stumbled across an old SI issue i had from dec 97 which had an article on t-mac which i found interesting and so I am gonna try my best to reproduce here since i dont know if SI keeps old articles online to cut/paste or link so here I go

A TOUGH QUESTION

When Tracy McGrady of Toronto is asked if he's happy that he skipped college, the reply is yes, but . . .

by Tim Crothers

It's Jan. 10, 1997, and Tracy Mcgrady has just dominated yet another high school basketball game. He's in a musty locker room, picking up dozens of maladorous socks and towels, because it's his turn to handle that chore. McGrady has just spent two days with a reporter who is eager to learn if McGrady, an exceptionally gifted senior forward, will apply for the NBA draft. The kid has talked at length about his life. About how he grew up poor, fatherless and anonymous, living with his grandma in the tiny Florida town of Auburndale. About how he never aspired to any college grander than nearby Polk Community until he was unearthed in the spring of 1996 by Joel Hopkins, coach at Mount Zion Christian Academy in Durham, N.C. About how he decided to transfer to Mount Zion, a budding national basketball power, for his senior year and how he took his first airplane flight, from North Carolina to New Jersey for a summer basketball camp. About how at that camp astonished college coaches from Kentucky, Syracuse and other schools dangled the possiblity of a scholarship, and how dazzled NBA scouts told him he could be among the first 15 picks in the next year's draft. About how those divergent paths made fro the most gutwrenching decision of his entire 17 years. And, finally, about how his fondest dreams were to guard his hero, Penny Hardaway, to slip on a pair of Air Mcgradys and to see his face on a McDonald's cup.
Forty-five minutes after the game, McGrady says goodbye to the reporter and scoops the last of the wet towels into a duffel bag. He begins walking toward the gymnasium exit when he suddenly turns back towards his interrogator. "Let me ask you a question," says McGrady, wide-eyed and desperate for some sage advice. "What do you think I should do?"

Tracy McGrady, now a Toronto Raptors rookie guard-forward, is almost always alone. He says that he used to have an entourage, but the guy had to go back to cosmetology school in Florida. So day after day McGrady sits by himself in a lavish, prefurnished three-bedroom, three-bathroom, three-TV apartment in Toronto that overlooks Lake Ontario and once belonged to Blue Jays pitcher Juan Guzman. McGrady lives like a shut-in. When he's at his apartment - which he is virtually all the time when the Raptors aren't on the road - McGrady folds himself into his couch and studies grainy videotapes of Magic Johnson running the Los Angeles Lakers' offense during the Showtime era or plays video games or watches college hoops and wonders what might have been. Mcgrady doesnt read any newspapers, and his huge apartment contains one book, Spencer Johnson's inspirational tome The Precious Present.
McGrady is wistfully indulging in a teenage fantasy. He makes countless long-distance calls, and there are no parents or siblings around screeching at him to get off the phone. His beeper blares so ceaselessly that his November cellular phone bill reached nearly $1,500. McGrady calls relatives and friends in Florida and his girlfriend in North Carolina. About once a week he compares notes by phone with second-year Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, who also went straight from high school to the NBA and who befriended McGrady last summer during a meeting set up by their agent, Arn Tellem.
Occasionally McGrady stares out his 12th floor window at the incoming Canadian winter with a deep sense of dread. Before he came to Toronto, he had seen snow only once in his life and he behaves somewhat like a bear in hibernation, sometimes sleeping as many as 20 hours in a day. He despises the cold so much that although he lives just a few blocks from the SkyDome, he always drives to games. Funny, when McGrady isn’t alone, he usually hangs out with thousands of people.
When Isiah Thomas, then Toronto’s executive vice president for basketball, selected McGrady with the ninth pick of last June’s draft, he believed McGrady was the second-best player available, behind only Tim Duncan. McGrady already had a six-year, $12.3 million endorsement deal with Adidas. In September, on the day McGrady sign ed a three-year contract worth $4.68 million, he boasted that he would be Rookie of the Year and would invent a unique jam that would win the Slam Dunk contest during the All-Star weekend. With his bank account bolstered. McGrady promptly bought himself a $47,000 Lexus sports utility vehicle and a 1996 Mercedes. He pledged $300,000 to Mount Zion Academy. He bought his grandmother Roberta Williford a house on a Florida lake, and he bought a condominium nearby, where his mothers, Melanise Williford, is staying while the new house McGrady purchased for her is being built. “I’m just blowing up because I can’t believe this,” said McGrady before training camp began. “It can’t get any better.”
He was right.
Perhaps it was a foreshadowing that, before entering his second exhibition game, McGrady forgot to tie the drawstring on his shorts. He played one-handed until the first whistle, using the other hand to hold up his pants. “I guess I’m still a little nervous about this,” he said afterwards.
At 18 (he won’t turn 19 until May 24), McGrady is the youngest player in the NBA. He’s so young that he started this season with a teammate, John Long, 41, who was playing in the league before McGrady was born. McGrady is the fourth player in the last three years to leapfrog from high school to the pros, and the fates of the other three are diverse. After two NBA seasons Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Garnett signed a six-year, $125 million contract, the richest in sports history. Bryant is already the darling of the Los Angeles Lake Show. However, forward Jermaine O’Neal is mildewing on the bench in his second year with the Portland Trail Blazers. “Jumping from high school to the NBA is like a virgin sleeping with a 40-year-old woman with three kids,” says Toronto forward Walt Williams. “You better raise your game a lot of you’ll be humiliated.”
McGrady learned that lesson during a preseason game against the Denver Nuggets. After botching a windmill dunk at one end, he retreated on defense, whereupon Denver’s rookie forward-center, Tony Battie caught him with an elbow while going up for a shot. Battie got the basket and a free throw. McGrady got a jaw joint contusion that forced him to miss a preseason game. His development was further curtailed on Nov. 4 at SkyDome against the Golden State Warriors when his youthful exuberance caused him to try to block a layup with just 1:31 left and the Raptors ahead by 21 points. He sprained an ankle, which eventually led to a sore arch that cost him 11 games and sent him into an emotional tailspin. “Tracy started feeling sorry for himself, but I didn’t treat him like a teenager,” Thomas says. “I told him, ‘You’re a grown man now. You’ve got to keep up.’”
Even when healthy, Mcgrady has had to deal with fluctuations in his playing time. In 14 games through Sunday, he had averaged 12.4 minutes, but as three recent games at SkyDome proved, there are few average stints. Against the Boston Celtics on Dec 17, McGrady played 26 minutes; against the Milwaukee Bucks last Friday, 15; and against the Washington Wizards on Saturday, one.
On the court the 6’8” McGrady has exhibited a smooth jump shot with good range and slick ball-handling skills. He has a 44-inch vertical leap and the wingspan of a condor. Through Sunday he was averaging 4.7 points and 2.9 rebounds per game, but much of his scoring and rebounding had come in bursts. McGrady had eight points in 11 minutes against the Atlanta Hawks on Nov. 1, and 10 points and 11 rebounds against the Indiana Pacers on Nov. 15. In the aforementioned game against Boston, he scored a career-high 17 points and provided a soaring dunk and a breathtaking rejection that were the Raptors’ only highlights in a bitter 88-83 defeat. Still, he says, that game did not bring him the greatest thrill of his young career. The pinnacle came on Dec. 13, when he found himself standing next to Michael Jordan during a game in Chicago. “I was freaked out thinking that I’m right beside MJ,” McGrady says. “I wanted to say something, but my lips froze.”
For Mcgrady, playing in the NBA is the first job he has held. The first paycheck he ever received was for $224,000. Cognizant of the volatility of this vast wealth in a teenager’s pocket, Toronto’s third-year guard and captain, Damon Stoudamire, 24, has watched over McGrady like a guardian angel. Their SkyDome lockers are side-by-side, and Stoudamire often sits beside McGrady on team flights, constantly whispering in his ear. “I tell him there’s going to be a lot of guys wanting to hang with him and even more women,” Stoudamire says. “During games he’s going to face a lot of players who are jealous of him. I guess I told him to be careful of everyone he meets.” Alas, Stoudamire hasn’t been able to protect McGrady from the losing: At week’s end Toronto was 3-23. Stoudamire has called the Raptors a “laughingstock,” and SkyDome has come to b e known as The Lost World.
Off the court McGrady has faced adversity as well. On Nov. 18 Thomas told the Toronto players that he might soon leave the organizations if his plans to acquire a majority ownership share in the Raptors fell through. Thomas concluded his remarks by turning to his youngest player and saying, “Tracy McGrady, welcome to the NBA.” Two days later, Thomas resigned. “When I heard the news, it really hurt me because Isiah was like a father figure,” McGrady says. “I felt lost, like everybody else was in a boat and I was drowning out in the water somewhere.”
Just four days after Thomas’s departure, forward Popeye Jones greeted McGrady in the Raptors locker room and told him, “Get you stuff, T-mac. We’re about to be traded to Philadelphia.” Toronto and Philadelphia newspapers were reporting rumors of a deal that would send Jones and McGrady to the 76ers for guard Jerry Stackhouse and forward Clarence Weatherspoon. The trade never came off, but McGrady was disillusioned again, especially when he realized Thomas initiated the talks. “You think you’re playing for a solid organization and think you’ve put down roots. Then suddenly you feel like you’re not needed.”
Says Williams, “In two months Tracy’s gone from 18 years old to around 26. He’s learned that there are no mommies around here. Nobody is going to hold his hand.”
Thus, the 1997-98 season is evolving into a postgraduate year for McGrady, a chance to learn the pro game and, by diligently lifting weights, to bulk up form his current 210 pounds to handle the daily grind. McGrady yearns for some stability, which is difficult to find in Toronto these days. Thomas is already gone, and coach Darrell Walker’s hold on his job is tenuous. Stoudamire will be a free agent after this season, so he may be traded away before he feels. On Dec. 30 in Detroit the Raptors will play their 29th game, more games than McGrady has ever played in one season. There will still be 53 more to go. McGrady’s dream of becoming Rookie of the Year has already vanished. The All-Star Slam Dunk contest was recently cancelled. McGrady had one day off last week, and he had to undergo a root canal procedure. “One of my boys from Florida will tell me how easy I’ve got it because all I’m doing is hoopin’, and I’ll tell him, ‘Cuz, you don’t know the half of it,’” McGrady says.
After the loss to Boston, as McGrady walked out of the plush Raptors locker room through a maze of used towels strewed across the wall-to-wall carpeting, he spotted a familiar face who reminded him of his indecision at the outset of 1997. McGrady allowed himself to grin at the memory and quietly asked, “ Do you think I made the right choice?”

 

yeah i thought the thing with damon was pretty ironic considering what we know now.

one thing that is vastly different for t-mac which i learnt from this article was that he had a much harsher reality-shock then kobe did. kobe was west's special guy (great move by west to get him for only vlade) and was pretty much given everything to help him grow as a player from day 1. kobe had a strong support group around him in west and having the MDP in the game in shaq to help in slowly adjust and improve himself. t-mac on the other hand had zeke leave after the first few weeks of his rookie season and then find out zeke initiated talks to trade him right away to philly. then he went to orlando with the whole problem of having a good cast when he was going to be the supporting player behind hill to being essentially t-mac + 4.

basically from reading this article myself and seeing his experiences in orlando it seems that this year will be first year tracy will have where he has a true team and a management that supports him and will do what it takes to win. based on this alone i expect tracy to have a great year and only hearing the remarks of his intense training makes it sweeter.

 

i guess i remember the situation differently. i do remember at first he was well received in orlando but he wasnt considered the franchise player, grant hill was. for a lack of a better analogy i remembered him regarded as like hill's "pippin" player, a great second option but not the franchise player. correct me if i am wrong about this too, but werent the magic trying to go after hill and duncan first and then when duncan re-signed with the spurs (or signed an extension) that they turned to try to get tracy? when tracy first arrived in orlando there was some decent talent there but they didnt try to "restock" the talent after they slowest started to lose player by player to either injury or free-agency. some of the trades they've made were also very questionable. (Brendan haywood, giricek, and even trading mike miller in the first place) i do understand with hill's max contract that it made it hard to sign another top player but i do believe they had the flexibility to be able to sign someone or trade for someone. the magic never made the commitment to try to do so. getting juwan howard was good, but they already had a young pf in gooden so that just caused some minutes problems and there were so many holes in that lineup all over the place it was a surprise that they even made the playoffs the previous years.

like i said earlier all this makes me even more excited for this season as winning brings all sorts of confidence and a team atmosphere and tracy will explode big time along with yao.

 

i do agree with your statement of Isiah but i dont think zeke was responsible for drafting jamison and trading him for carter. i believe it was the new gm who did that, whether or not he had asked zeke for advice i dont know. from the article zeke left the raptors at the end of nov during tracy rookie year before vince was in the league

 

you forgot to mention that one of the players they quote, Walt Williams, was on the rockets also! and his 'angel' damon stoudamire was nearly a rocket! my god talk about moving the planets into position