i don't want to hear anymore excuses. this is the time for him to at least play like he did last season. yao is currently playing his best basketball yet, along with howard, alston, and wesley playing much better. t-mac is the only missing piece. if need be, i say let yao take the most shots for the team every game.
He's a shell of his former self, he's slow and flat-footed out there most of the time, so it usually comes down to making his jumpers or not. McGrady's health has been and continues to be a bigger issue by the day. I have seen injuries destroy some great and promising careers, I hope he's not one of those. The only good news I guess is that he's under contract I believe for three or four more seasons after this one. We will get at least two pretty good years production-wise from him, although with diminishing returns with each passing year. Unless he somehow mysteriously heals all his injuries by next season, he will need to re-adjust his game to stay not only effective but efficient.
By watch Rox's games, i realize whenever T-mac 1 on 1 someone is not a mismatch anymore, like it use to be. But watch Kobe and Paul pierce 1 on 1, you just feel it's a mismatch. i dont know if anyone else has this feeling?
Maybe the Rockets are a better team with Yao getting the spotlight and T-mac sort of laying back and just trying to get everyone involved for a while. Let's see how it plays out - the Rockets are playing well right now.
We needed him to step up tonight though and for whatever reason (most prob injuries) he didn't..like Tigermission said earlier, my concern about his health grows with each passing day.
That's the big elephant in the room. Everyone feels it but they really feel uncomfortable addressing it. It's almost like it's a sure thing that tmac will revert back to his former self. I hope so, man.
He definitely needs to be more aggresive going to the basket. Settling for jumpers is going to kill his effectiveness. Actually, it already has.
Not well enough to be an elite team. This team is not constructed to have enough talent around the two star players to enable one or more of the star players to tag along for the season and not affect his team's performance that much (i.e. Duncan with the Spurs or Shaq with the Heat), this team is SO dependent on their two stars playing well enough just to make the playoffs, and then once there they have to play out of their minds just to compete and have a chance at winning. Let's face it: this team is not well-built enough to afford -- in the long-run -- the poor play of one or more of its star players. McGrady's only priority should be to seek every existing method known to man to cure his back/knee problems...I don't care what it is, he should try it. His health is the only thing holding him back, forget practice or shootarounds or whatever else, what's bringing him down is his health. He MUST do something about that.
Well he was not up to par tonight, what's with the neck pack? He looked really slow. His back must be the problem.
I don't think it's his health. Did anybody see that drive and dunk in the 1st quarter? He was above the rim!
so true. and I don't believe he is hurt. The way he dunks, nobody hurt could do those dunks. There is something bothering him and its not injuries. And its not cause he got old all of a sudden. Just a month ago he was destroying the league.
Oh, it's injuries. His speed is not there, his elevation is occasionally there but not there all the time. He will have one explosive play once in a while, but not all the time like he used to. If I am not mistaken the knees are what's hurting his speed and explosiveness, while his back hurts his shot. He has an old body, just not built like Lebron or Kobe or Wade, his body is fragile and is breaking down on him.
I think his health and personal issues are becoming too much of an excuse. Don't get me wrong, i know he has struggled with health and personal issues, but ya with dunks like the ones he does, and him saying that the personal issues are left behind (meaning over) then what excuse does T-mac have now? I can careless if T-mac scores 35 points against a team like Raptors and Magic, do it against strong powerful teams like Suns and Spurs
