The most disappointing superstar in the past decade

Rudy Gay. Hes supposed to be the reflection of Durant?
Joe Johnson because of the contract?

 

Tracy McGrady without question. In 2003, the consensus was that he was better than Kobe, because he was. That season he put up in Orlando is an all-time great. He had better athleticism, better measureables, and better God-given ability to play basketball. Period. His court vision was on par with Steve Nash. His dunks were on par with his cousin's (ask Shaun Bradley).

He made basketball look effortless, because it might actually have been effortless to him. Charles Barkley and Karl Malone can look back in retirement at their careers without rings and still be satisfied that they did everything they could to win. McGrady will never tell anyone, but I guarantee you he will live with that regret for the rest of his life.

 

cleverly disguised tmac bashing thread.

 

Chris Webber could've been so much better. Still a huge fan and I think he has a strong case for the Hall of Fame.

 

yao ming for sure.

 

I'm actually going to go with Amar'e. I remember how good he use to be and then he hit his first micro-fracture surgery...and he came back even better. He was looking like an all-time talent but some more injuries later and here he stands, and I am wondering if he will ever be back to being a beast on the floor.

 

decent list, except one of those players is HOF first ballot.

And if you are going to include Stevie, then where is Elton Brand....Antawn Jamison and Shareef.

 

Tracy McGrady defines that list. He's come across every form of disappointment in the book, whether it was injuries, underachievement in the playoffs, playing on bad teams, or a bad attitude. His career, while great, will always be marred with dissatisfaction and disappointment from fans.

 

Could Brand have realistically been that much better than he was before he blew out his achilles?

 

I voted Yao because we saw how devastating he was against most teams in 2009. Not many teams could stop him, front courts all over the league were helpless.

 

You forgot Stackhouse, too.

Like I say, decent list, but Iverson and Francis should not be on it. One because he's a first ballot HOFer and the other because he's not worthy.

That's weird phrasing. Not sure I understand. Francis and Amar'e got injured, too.

Brand was like 22-10 for eight years and peaked at 25ppg. Antawn, Stackhouse and Shareef were scoring machines greater than Francis, too. I'm just saying, why include Francis and not them?

Francis only gets included in this list because he's a Rocket.

 

No Stephon Marbury?

I think Andrew Bynum is headed his way there.

I think Steve Francis is some of his own undoing compared to the field. Those guys mentioned have valid health reasons and bad teams reasons.

Francis once he went down he stayed down, he didnt continue on any reduced paced. About as "flameout" as you can get unfortunately. (And also those guys weren't as "HYPED!", that does count toward expectations)

- An aside: and how depressing is this factoid:
From when Steve last played, he's now eligible for Basketball HALL of FAME
Time is flying, and he's been out that long

 

Well in the case of Amare, there was the issue that he never bothered to learn how to rebound or play defense.

In Francis' case, there was always a feeling that he wasn't playing to his potential; that despite his immense physical gifts (and actually pretty high skill-level), he was never all that good at reading the floor, having a feel for how the pieces moved within an offense and in response to the defense, understanding how to initiate and find guys, etc. He was an incredible athlete, a tremendous rebounder for his size and one of the best one-on-one players you'll ever see, but I'm not sure anyone ever called him a great point guard. I think some of those critiques were unfair (especially a lot of the crap he took here), but a lot of it was valid.

Contrasted with someone like Brand, I don't think I ever felt like he was underachieving.

 

good call. I knew we were missing one more

I'd take AI, Francis and Melo (too premature for my taste) off the list and replace them with

Stackhouse
Marbury
Brand (since Yao's on it, too)

And, of course, TMac is the obvious winner.

 

Those were stars at best not SUPERSTARS

 

he is nothing without steve nash

ok he's something by himself but not a superstar

 

A player who's been creeping up on my list is Deron Williams.

For all the talk about him being one of two top point guards, his career path plateaued in Utah, and then took a dip with the Nets.

Also, Dwight has nothing on him as far as being a coach killer.

Perhaps DWill could right the ship with all the off-season acquisitions the Nets made.