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Who would've thought it was The Little Guys and not The Big Guy, that would help Tracy McGrady get his game back to that elite level, and consequently, take his team back to playoff-contending status again? You know who I'm talking about?
Last summer, when the Lakers were undergoing big changes, and the Houston-Orlando blockbuster trade was going down, everybody and their mama was saying the new Rockets tandem of Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming had just become the NBA's new most dynamic duo....and consequently, the Rockets would soon become a championship contender.
Yao and Mac, the skyscraper and the man who leaps over them, together on the same team that went 45-37 the year before. Hopes were high in Houston. But a six-win, 11-loss start changed everything. It appeared the combination of Yao and T-Mac didn't make anything better. If anything, things were much worse than the '03-04 season, before Houston dealt All-Star Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley and Kelvin Cato to Orlando for McGrady, Juwan Howard, Tyronn Lue and Reece Gaines last summer.
It made you rethink things, how perfect combos sometimes look better on paper than they turn out in reality. You know, like Jay-Z and R. Kelly on the "Best of both Worlds" tour. Or Affleck and J. Lo in Gigli . Or better yet, like McGrady and Grant Hill in Orlando or McGrady and Vince Carter in Toronto.
With McGrady and Yao, the Rockets had two perennial starting NBA All-Stars in their lineup, yet they couldn’t even hang with the mediocre teams. At least not through December 2, when their record was 6-11. The lineup head coach Jeff Van Gundy had on the floor at the time just wasn’t cutting it. With Yao at centrer, either Howard or Maurice Taylor at power forward, reliable vet Jim Jackson at small forward, McGrady at shooting guard and either Lue or Charlie Ward struggling at the point. The Rockets had a good defending team that could not put the ball in the basket on offense.
The Rockets were fast on their way to becoming the NBA’s most disappointing team of ’04-05.
So three things happened that infamous December 2 date (give or take a few weeks): Converted shooting guard Bob Sura, out for most of November with a knee injury, was named starting point guard; Lue was dealt to Atlanta for the energetic Jon Barry, who immediately became the first guard off the bench; Jim Jackson was dealt to New Orleans for wily veteran David Wesley, who was moved to shooting guard so that the 6’8”, 210-pound McGrady could play his more natural small forward position.
And in their next 18 games, the Rockets went 12-6, McGrady and Yao were named starters on the NBA All-Star team and general manager Carroll Dawson became a strong candidate for NBA Executive of the Year.
Just like that.
Tracy is used to hearing outsiders’ perspectives, but not used to hearing them admit “it doesn’t really matter.” For a guy who just came off a season where his team, the Orlando Magic, finished a league-worst 21-61 and had his name dragged through the mud, he definitely can appreciate a statement like this. As he later says, “One thing I learned in Orlando was that other peoples’ opinions of me don’t really matter at all.”
McGrady is 25 years old, but he seems so much older. The popular adidas commercial shows him as the basketball giant who will dunk on you no matter how many army tanks and helicopters you bring at him. But the real McGrady actually moves in slow motion, too, though his off-court movements seem more like the Grady character in Sanford and Son than a commercial superhero.
Maybe that’s what happens after eight years in The Association. You get older, wiser, slower.
T-Mac came into the league as a shy teenager, the USA Today Player of the Year out of North Carolina’s Mount Zion Christian Academy. Started out as the sleepy-eyed supersub for the Toronto Raptors for three seasons, leaving before Carter took the Raptors to the Eastern semis in ’01. And then blossomed into a star with the Orlando Magic, earning All-NBA accolades his last three seasons there and taking his new team to the playoffs for three of his four seasons there, averaging 32 points in the postseason, despite not being able to play with Hill, who was injured most of his time there.
McGrady then came to Houston last summer with a lot of fanfare, but it has taken him awhile to make that first impression, even with his teammates.
“Pretty quiet,” says Wesley. “That’s how I would describe him. Doesn’t really say too much ‘til you get to warm up to him. That’s been my only impression.”
It’s not that he’s a mute. It’s just that he’s a changed man.
In Orlando, McGrady was routinely blasted by his team’s new general manager, the newspapers and by the fans on sports-talk radio for being a selfish and lackadaisical player.
Don’t get the situation totally wrong, he still had his supporters. Millions of fans still voted McGrady on to the All-Star starting team and the media voted him All-NBA second team after he led the League in scoring for the second straight season.
But, for the first time in his life, he had detractors, and he knew he had to answer the naysayers with his play this year. Six wins and eleven loses was no way to silence the critics.
As the Rockets started to get on their winning ways McGrady got happier off the court, too, settling into his new 25,000-square-foot mansion in the suburb of Sugar Land, TX, and getting ready to move his fiancée, ClaRenda Harris, and their 1-year-old daughter, Layla, into the new digs.
He just became the first NBA player to own a private plane, buying a white Falcon 2000, with T1 MAC painted on it’s side, and parking it at a commuter airport terminal a few miles from his house. He plans to lease it out to others to cover the cost of it.
As VH1 would say, it is definitely good to be Tracy McGrady. Loving the living-large lifestyle, doing stuff like buying eight copies of the new Game album so that he has one for the Bentley, BMW, Maybach…you get he picture.
His scoring average is down a bit, averaging 26 points for most of the season, but still getting the customary 6 rebounds and 6 assists while playing a league-high 42 minutes per game. But the wins are more frequent and the potential of the team is frightening.
Now a forward in Houston, McGrady is not as guarded anymore. And for the first time in awhile, everyone, including him, is happier because of the change.
Same for this one, wrote it about a month ago.
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 CP3 for 2005-2006 ROY. |
Step Forward, A Tracy McGrady article
Jul 8 2005, 03:38 PM
