It's probably already been said, but just in case. The only reason I could see the Hawks doing this is if they want to unload a bad contract or two. McGrady makes more than JJ, so they would have to include someone else to make it match anyway. Otherwise, I don't see why they'd make this trade either. Which would you rather have: Resigned JJ thanks to gaining his Bird Rights through this trade + Additional 5-10m in contracts or Resigned McGrady or Signed free agent(s) making 7-10m (not sure on this number, been a while since I read Blima's post talking about how much $$$ we should have) Personally I'd probably take JJ depending on how long the additional contracts are. I'm ready to move past McGrady, and I doubt we can get enough to move us back to the top of the West with that 7-10m. Pugs
Forget field goal percentages...Kobe consistently gets to the rim, opponents must respect his drive. McGrady, more than often that not, settles for the jumper. Take away McGrady's best asset of getting to rim and he turns into predictable chucker. Hopefully he is mentally prepared to drive in the lane and attack the basket this season...
All you guys that keep saying TMac will come back and be as good as ever remind me of Women who get beat by their mates and keep taking them back. "But he said he wouldnt do it anymore". Well if he said it it must be true.
do you even watch kobe? dude takes like 80% of his shots on the perimeter. he's just a lethal jumpshooter. go re-watch his playoff run. tracy, the past few years, has struggled with his J obviously so yes, he should try to not necessarily drive more, but adjust his game to a more midrange/post up game.
Joe Johnson has already spent a number of years with a young squad. How much can he help us from 30 plus onwards? I wouldn't trade for him.
Tell me defenders can just play Kobe up real close to defend the J. They can't, because he always has the option of driving to the basket.
uh, they play him REAL close. do you even watch kobe? watch how shane guards him. kobe doesn't even look to drive at all and just shoot jumpers all day v. shane. all his jumpers are freakin' tough as hell b/c there is always a hand in his face, sometimes 2. kobe primarily shoots the midrange J or the fadeaways nowadays. tracy used to be able to make tough shots before all these injuries. it's impossible that he will regain that supreme greatness. therefore he needs to change his game if he still wants to be an impactful player in this league.
This is a fair criticism of McGrady, Ziggy. But what it speaks to, to me, is the predicament McGrady has been in for the past four seasons in Houston as the team's primary offensive playmaker and decision-maker. When you talk of Kobe Bryant's relentlessness, you're not necessarily referring to Bryant attacking the basket, as much as you're referring to Bryant's mindset of manufacturing offense. One of the things that has irritated Phil Jackson about Bryant is the refusal of Bryant to make the best basketball play, which would mean passing to guys that are open when he draws a lot of attention. During the 2006-2007 preseason, Jackson publicly was critical of Bryant's refusal to become more of a facilitator and playmaker for the Lakers. It would have made some of the responsibilities of the guys he was playing with at the time a bit easier to handle. But Bryant resisted that furiously. Bryant wasn't going to change who he was. Everybody else had to do their jobs, because he wasn't going to do it for them. Kobe understands that what he does best is score points. And Bryant also understands that you can score points at the free throw line as well as from the field. There was a game early in that same season I mentioned where the Lakers played the Rockets in the Forum, where Bryant shot at least 20 free throws. Whether or not Bryant got favorable treatment or not from the officiating isn't as important as Bryant understanding that his team had no chance to win if they couldn't score points. Bryant did his level best to make sure that his team scored as often as he could. Bryant would not trust anybody else besides himself to score, and he was probably right. That team started Kwame Brown, Luke Walton, Chris Mihm and Smush Parker alongside Bryant, I believe, Ziggy. I don't know if I'd have trusted any of those players myself. The point is that what McGrady's role should have been for the Rockets (particularly a team that could not score enough points in the general course of a game on its own), was to be the guy who scored. McGrady was willing to set players up who wouldn't or couldn't make shots. He facilitated an offense that actually wasn't an offense. McGrady, to me, understands what to do with the basketball when he has it, especially if he's crowded or double-teamed. That's why two coaches haven't had a problem with him handling it a bit more than would be considered normal. McGrady can and does often facilitate an offense the way you would expect a point guard to do. McGrady CAN play the point, Ziggy. But that's not what makes McGrady a special player. McGrady can score. And he can score in a multitude of ways. He should never have been the guy to get other players an open look. He should have been the player the other guys were looking to get open. Which is what Rick Adelman is trying to get McGrady to understand. That's what has people calling for McGrady's head around here. He's the one guy on the team that can manufacture a score. But because he was also responsible for making the best play for the team (which meant that the defense too often had the upper hand), he hasn't developed the sense of when he HAS to make sure that the Rockets get something out of the offensive possession, Ziggy. It's not about McGrady's ability or his approach to me. Not reallyu. It's about making him into what he does better than anybody else on your team, and that's a scorer. McGrady has become a very unselfish player offensively, and that has taken whatever individual edge he may have had as an offensive player away. If McGrady is as weak-minded as is held in popular opinion, it didn't help to have him trust guys to score who couldn't do that, no matter how smart a play he'd make. You don't ask your best player to do everything if you can help it. You make sure that what he does better than anybody else on your team is HIS job. McGrady should be the guy who scores, Ziggy. Not the guy who sets up players who can't score....
Boom daddy! Boom, bang, pop, bam!!! McGrady's greatest bball skill is his scoring ability. He scored 30 ppg on a total junk team and carried them on his shoulders all by himself to the playoffs. Without him, they were a 20 win team. He comes to Houston and starts playmaking. Hey dude is talented! He can make plays. But when you put McGrady in a role of making plays for others and then the other guys (errrrraferrrr) are piling up 4 for 13s, and then McGrady is taking all the bail out shots, the shots at the end of the shotclock on busted possessions, the half court chucks at the end of quarters, and he is so focused on hitting the open man, what do you expect besides a less than efficient McGrady. I have said and believed, like you have, that McGrady's first thought when the bball touches his hands is to score the ball. He should be looking to score. He's good at it. And he should look to make a play second. Good ole Van Gundy turned all that around, sticking him in pick and rolls, which he is good at, but taking him away from his best attribute, the ability to stick the ball in the hoop almost at will. McGrady, when he is hot, should be looking for his shot, early in the shot clock, upfake and shoot, spot up and shoot, curl and shoot, dribble drive, high post pivot and shoot over the hapless defender, you name it. He should be looking for positions on the floor to receive the ball and get his shot up early and often and keep it going. Then let the playmaking work off his scoring. Kevin Martin is a scorer. He goes down the offensive end looking for places to score. McGrady should do the same. We should be posting McGrady up from 17, he should be receiving the ball, and absolutely torching the defense until they are forced to double him from receiving the ball. Then you want to find cutters..........try finding the open cutter at the rim when 2 defenders are having to stick to McGrady to keep him from receiving the basketball. Do you know how deadly McGrady is when he receives the basketball 18 feet from the basket and he hasn't dribbled the ball yet? He's six foot freaking 9. He is taller and longer than any single defender save for a Taushan Prince type. And he is more skilled than 99% of the guys he's on the floor with. Do you think anybody in the NBA wants to face a healthy McGrady with the ball in his hands, with the dribble still available to him? What do they do? Body him up before he faces up? Forget that. He's got one dribble and a slam or one dribble and a pull up over a defender stuck on his left shoulder, most likely drawing the foul and getting a wide open look from 16 feet. So, they lay off him and let him turn and face? What a farce! a 6'9" scorer deluxe facing the basket from 17 feet away with the defender fading off of him. No contest. He will hit that shot at a 60% clip my friend, if not higher. When McGrady becomes the scoring focus, it forces the defense to have to up the anty and over commit. When the defense knows he is setting up everybody else, looking for screens to work off of, and looking to drive and dish, and he is injured besides..........my God, they'll take that all day and twice on Sunday. The defense does not want to defend McGrady when he is looking to score the ball. They do not want that when guys like Yao and Scola are on the floor. Now we've got Brooks who can put the ball in the hoop. IF.........and it's a big if............but if McGrady can get healthy, with Brooks at the point and Scola down low, something has got to give. The defense can't give Brooks daylight. He will eat them alive. He should bring the ball up and look for McGrady curling up into the key area. Simple play. Throw McGrady the ball, fade out, let Scola drop down low after screening for McGrady and watch the fun begin. When McGrady is healthy, he is one of the top 5 scoring threats in basketball. Hopefully he is healthy and hopefully Adelman tells him to score the ball first and make plays after he gets triple teamed and his mates are wide open for layups. Otherwise, let him get the ball 18 feet out and take the shot.
Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here, jopatmc. McGrady still has to get back on the floor and show he's still able to play. Which I do expect, by the way. The temptation is always to let the best player do everything for your team. Especially at this level, and in the glare of media hype that convinces more than a few of us that one guy beats five if that one guy is a media darling. That has been especially easy in Tracy McGrady's case. He's shown a willingness to pass the ball to people that it took GREAT players like Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon the better part of 10 seasons to figure out. Jordan and Olajuwon's egos had a lot to do with that. And McGrady's ego is such that, because he can excel as a playmaker, he has shown a resistance form time to time of letting some of that responsibility fall to somebody else, unless the could handle it. But the bottom line is that exceptionally talented players HAVE to be given roles, where those players ask for them or not. And you're usually better off making sure your scorers score, and your playmakers make plays. And it probaby doesn't hurt if those two jobs don't fall to the same player, jopatmc. Jordan didn't call Pippen his "MVP" for nothing. Pippen facilitated the offense, Jordan scored. Still, it remains to be seen how McGrady comes back from his surgery physically.... ....and if he can accept his new role mentally.....
Bravo, sir! Very well said. My concern is whether his body will hold up through the season. He needs to stay healthy in order to score with efficiency. Maybe that's a pipe dream.
McGrady has said many times that Pippen is his idol. He keeps trying to play like him. He really should be in the Jordan role. Score first, pass second.
Well, there's work to do yet for McGrady there, TheGreat. He is (or at least, has been) a very good middle-distance jumpshooter for the most part. His consistency at it has declined in recent seasons, be it through having the ball further away from the basket, or lingering injuries, or whatever, but Michael Jordan learned to win by making that shot. Kobe Bryant has that 18-foot shot that he works to get against a set half court defense. Paul Pierce has closed out games for the Celtics by working to get that shot. Theoretically, it shouldn't be difficult to get that to be a staple of McGrady's game again. Without all of the extracurricular ballhandling. But again, all of this is just guesswork. I'm rooting for McGrady personally, TheGreat. He isn't the cancer or the albatross he's been painted as. He's been a player that wants to win, but can't figure out how to do that on his own. I can accept that that probably means that McGrady isn't an all-time great player. Or even a borderline hall of a fame player. So I can accept fans' being critical of his on-court performances or his on-mike flubs. At the end of the day, though, what hapens form here on out, for the Rockets and for McGrady himself, will be up to him. ....and wasn't this thread supposed to be about trading for Joe Johnson?
Well, that's because McGrady isn't as stupid or selfish or scurrilous as some believe him to be, jopatmc. McGrady understands the game and how to play it. That takes more than natural God-given ability. 9 out of 10 players in the NBA are some kind of physical freak who runs like the wind and jumps like a deer. None of that makes you a great player. You maybe have the tools. But if you don't work and build and refine those gifts, you're not doing anything except carrying the team bags to and from the bus. And all that work gets you is the opportunity to face the mental challenge of facing and beating competition on a similar level of talent and fortitude. It wouldn't be totally honest of me to say that I haven't been disappointed with McGrady's playoff history here myself, jopatmc. I'm a Rockets fan, first and foremost. When the Rockets lose, it hurts me. I don't like it. But I try my best not to point fingers or place blame. When it's all said and done, somebody's got to win and somebody's got to lose. And since this is a team sport, no one player on any team is solely responsible for wins or losses. If that were true, than no Rocket other than Hakeem Olajuwon or Clyde Drexler deserves the rings those teams got, because nobody outside of those two players ever so much as made an All-Star team on their own. McGrady, I believe, understands that it takes all five teammates consistently working together on both sides of the ball in order to win at this level. If anything, I don't know if McGrady understands what that may mean to his role in that for the Rockets. He spent most of his time in Orlando being the main man. He was a young player then, and while he'd achieved great individual success, his teams did not. And as has always been the case, when a team fails at this level, it's the highest-profile player's fault. McGrady managed to mature a great deal under Jeff Van Gundy, jopatmc. Some of the responsibilities of teamwork and accountability and effort that he shied away from in Orlando, he embraced here. Both he and the Rockets benefited greatly from that. The Rockets have been steadily winning 50 or more games for four of the past five years. That wouldn't happen if McGrady was anything like the malcontent he's been called. I don't have a problem with McGrady wanting to be a facilitator outright, because he accepted that when he came to the Rockets. He expected to play off Yao Ming. Yao, of course, was not ready to be the main guy then, so there was a bit of a delay there. But to be a facilitator by definition means that there are other scoring options on the floor, jopatmc. When Magic Johnson played, he played with a bunch of guys who could put the ball in the basket. So he accepted the role of facilitator, even though he could score if needed. McGrady has never had that luxury before now. And of course, that just adds to the excuse bin of McGrady's failures. McGrady's always been one of the very few players in the league that could find a way to score no matter what defense is set against his team. But as much as roles need to fit certain players, those players have to fit their team, too. It seems to fit McGrady's nature to be a set-up man, or a facilitator. He doesn't want the ball in his hands in order to keep it away from his teammates or to take horrible shots or draw the wrath of fans. He just believes that he can make something positive happen. He is supremely talented and supremely confident in his ability. I just believe that he's heard all those things about how he doesn't have what it takes to win, and how he's lazy and a blight on the human condition, not to mention not winning in the postseason, and it's worn him down. It's understandable, but ultimately unacceptable. McGrady's been the best chance for success the Rockets have had, along with Yao Ming. He's failed (or rather, the Rockets have failed), and that's just fact. The time is now to get over that. For himself and for the Rockets, in my opinion, jopatmc. Or, we could always trade McGrady away for a couple of chia pets and some chewing gum....whichever Daryl More figures is easier to pull off.....
Typical McGrady apologists.... It may be a team game, but when he tells the media "it's on me" and fails, he rightfully deserves the lion's share of the blame. He may not have had solid teams in the past, but last year's roster had championship potential. Too bad he decided to come into the season out of shape. The opportunity was there; he just didn't capitalize. He may understand the game and know how to play in theory, but he has yet to adapt his game to compensate for his declining athleticism. You think winning 50 regular season games means he wasn't a malcontent? Kobe and Shaq had a lot of friction and they still won championships. And don't kid yourself. Last year, McGrady was the embodiment of stupidity and selfishness.
