Haha. With TMac and Alston gone I thought our days of 50 blame-game threads after each game were over... Little did I know.
Seems place is calmer in here today. That will change once the mainstays comment again calling everyone complainers at every turn.
Voldemort was lazy with a diva complex... he wasn't the whole reason a team failed. Maybe the problem is in defining a scapegoat.
Defining a scapegoat, Hayesfan? Hmmmm......let's see..... If I were to guess what goes into the making of a "scapegoat" for a professional team.... ...you'd have to start with expectations. As a matter of course, you don't "blame" or "hold accountable" a player who is, by all appearances, overachieving just by being on the court. Basketball is very much a TEAM game, no matter who happens to be on your roster. A "specialist" in basketball doesn't serve you any purpose, other than to give you the illusion of competing. Scapegoating a player is much more convenient when the expectations for a player, fairly or unfairly, are far above what you may expect from other players. You can still be a great pitcher and win 20 games on an awful baseball team, the ultimate specialist sport. If you remove Peyton Manning from the Indianapolis Colts, they'd be the Buffalo Bills. When you're exceptional in a specialist role in a specialist sport, you can carry a team a very long way. Tom Brady of the New England Patriots knows just what I mean. That thinking or approach has never applied in basketball at any level. One spectacular player often means the difference between winning and losing, all things being equal. Of course, all things would have to be equal before you could really know if that were true. I'll say this plainly, in regards to Tracy McGrady. He did more to keep the Rockets afloat (with or without Yao Ming) than anybody will ever acknowledge—not because of who he is (or who he isn't), but because of what he could DO. Think about that a minute, Hayesfan. The_Yoyo is a venerable presence here on this forum. I'd go as far as to say that he's one of those people here who literally holds the fate of some other posters in his or her hands, if he likes or dislikes what you post here. He made a post somewhere not too long ago, revealing some exhaustive research he did to refute the notion that Tracy McGrady ever did enough when it counted the most to win. The thinking, generally, is that if McGrady ever needed to perform up to the level his ability suggested, he needed to do it during the last 6 or 7 minutes of a ballgame. That would be the time when McGrady would be measured. When the game was in the balance. Great players don't have to be great all the time. Just when the team needs them to be great. Cue Brett Favre. I was impressed by the thoroughness with which he presented his argument. Basically, The_Yoyo offered that when it came to "winning time", Tracy McGrady was 0-for-forever. Always had been. Always would be. Feel free to insert your own reason why. The stats don't lie. The_Yoyo, I'm sure, felt great pride in what he discovered. But all that missed the point. The point that everyone (McGrady, the Rockets team and organization, and the fan base) always seemed to miss with McGrady. The TEAM never proved itself capable of winning when it counted, either. But that never mattered, because the TEAM never had to be good enough with McGrady around to take the heat for failure. The Tracy McGrady Experience, in microcosm—game 2 of the 2008 playoffs against the dreaded Utah Jazz: McGrady is SENSATIONAL for the first three quarters and some change of that game. He scored. He passed. He rebounded. He defended. He carried bags and parked cars and served concessions. He shouldn't have bothered, it seems, because he disappeared (and admitted as such afterward), when the time came to finish the game. He'd done his best, but as was often the case with McGrady, his timing sucked. Had he waited until about the seven minute mark of the fourth quarter of that game to be sensational, we all might be having a bit of a different conversation about McGrady. The game probably would have been over with, of course. But McGrady would have looked good when it counted. Looking good in a loss is better than doing what you can to win, I suppose. You don't scapegoat people whom you don't expect anything from in this sport. Trevor Ariza was "scapegoated" for not being anything more than a role player (and not being asked to play his role, in fact), because for whatever reason, more was expected from him. Nobody bothered to look at how he performed at the end of games. Or the beginning of games. Or in the middle of games. He was the Rockets' big free agent signing, so he had to deliver the goods. Nothing with these Rockets is all too different from where I sit. The team is well-liked, by and large. And despite what anybody would like us to believe, we've always been better off with Chuck Hayes and Shane Battier than we ever were with Tracy McGrady...so it makes no sense now to say that these two are "comfort food" or expendable. We could all pull the same stats review trick on either Battier or Hayes, regarding their productivity (or lack thereof)....but nobody will because we're going to put statues of them up outside the Toyota Center next to Hakeem Olajuwon just as soon as they're done playing. Why anybody bothers looking for a scapegoat amidst a team of "underdogs" and "overachievers" and "no-stats all-stars" and "efficiency-beasts"...... ...a team that most of us lay awake dreaming of seeing together.... ...is par for the course on a fan website. You've said it yourself, of course, Hayesfan (and in a lot fewer words than me...BRAVO!).... ....the TEAM has to get better. Because not one of them is good enough on his own to make us forget that.
...and for the record.... ....the Rockets are NINE game into this season. If they're still struggling after the turn of the calendar year, then maybe we should all consider setting ourselves on fire or jumping off the nearest tall building. Sheesh. It's not like this team is the Miami Heat or something.....
