[Tracy McGrady] I could've won championships, I just never had the pieces around me.

That was the beginning of the end of the low post player being a focal point to a teams offense. The zone was now legal so teams would just front Yao in the post and we would be so dumbfounded that we couldn't adjust and struggled to score.

 

Yao had a great pick and pop move early on, but everyone insisted on bulking him up so he could be in the post more often. His jump shot was consistent enough to be Chinese Dmo.

 

Sorry but while Harden never won a title, to lump him into the same category as McBrittle is silly.

T-Cup was an injury waiting to happen, was never the fittest basketball player, and never seemed to really like basketball. Not only did he not get the Rockets out of the first round, he never got the Magic out of the first round either, even after being up 3-1 against the Sixers.

Harden got to the second round 5 times, WCF twice and won an MVP with the Rockets. Heck the only team they could not beat was an all time great GSW squad. Also, Harden was sixth man of the year on a team that made the finals and is likely the starting point guard on a team that will do it this year.

Sorry but their is no comparison.

 

Hey T-Mac, IF I crapped in one hand and wished in another could you tell me which one would fill up 1st?

 

Bobby Sura (loved his hustle but Bobby was more successful off the court with the houstonian ladies then on the court). Scott Padgett , flying Ryan Bowen, Novak, David Wesley, Jim Jackson (well past his best)Rod Strickland ( washed up) Marc Jackson)( washed)Chris Childs( total disappointment) those are some of the teammates I can think from the Gundy era McGrady was told to carry. Hell we had a 2-0 lead on a loaded Dallas team to only lose in a game 7 40 point loss in Dallas after wining the first two in Dallas.

 

All that is true, we might have gotten past Dallas if Juwan was fit , but Tracy wasn't an Alpha male by any means. That was the main difference between him and the late Kobe. There's no way we could have won an NBA championship with Mcgrady as the lead player. Yao achieved more with less athletic ability.

 

Yes but it dosent change the fact Dawson didn’t put enough talent around him. Morey is the one who brought in Artest, Battier and Scola. If McGradys knees was not shot to pieces that 2008- 2009 team could have easily beat the Lakers

 

Yeah me too, Tracy.

Truth is he wasn't good enough to win a Hakeem-like underdog title. He didn't have the pieces around him to win a Lebron-like title. What he doesn't realize is there's a few guys like him every season since the beginning of time. Lillard, Jokic, CP3, etc.

I can see clearly that if he had taken a few fewer shots and deferred to Yao and open shooters a bit more, our team would have been better. Hindsight is 20/20 though, the media kept triggering his insecurities about being a leader so he let them get into his head by being too much of a hero and then finally fizzling out.

We were hoping you were Hakeem-like, but I acknowledge that our historically cheap ownership didn't give you a Lebron-like chance.

 

Good points, but let me tell you the big difference.
Harden is the much, much better regular season player. Which resulted in HCA and some easy playoff series wins.
T-Mac elevated his game in the playoffs, Harden didn’t exactly choke but underperformed in the playoffs.

 

excellent point!
The one issue that empirical accumulated knowledge has is that it’s conservative by nature and changes slowly.
Stat-based analytics is a junk pseudoscience, but it does take a fresh look at things, unencumbered by priors.
The slow adaption to illegal D rule change is a case in point. I’ve been think about that too.

 

The story of the Jazz series is simple: Kirilenko figured T-mac out after the first 2 games and JVG couldn’t adjust and find an answer.
He was gone after the season, and first thing Adelman and Morey said at their intro press conference was that Rick knew how to make things easier for T-Mac (and Yao) to score. That was the story. T-mac faced a great defensive player in Kirilenko and had an offensively-limited coach.

 

correct!

 

The spacing was not really that great at that time.

McGrady grew a soft player, couldn't withstand body contact that well.

Bad luck with the injuries and wrong offseason workouts.

That was when the rules were still somewhat normal.

 

Two things can be true simultaneously.

• McGrady's supporting cast sucked butt

• McGrady was more often than not too injured to ever really be a title threat (this applies to Yao too btw)

We had two years where both Yao and Tracy were (relatively) healthy the majority of the year and into the playoffs.

2004-05: The Dallas series. Still pisses me off to this day. We almost certainly would have gotten bounced by Phoenix in the next round, but still. Highway robbery.

2006-07: This was the legit opportunity to go far. The top-seeded Mavericks got bounced before the Semis and we would have smashed Golden State and played San Antonio in the WCF. SA was god-tier at this time, but we only finished 8 games behind them in a season where Yao, by this point our best player, was out for half of it.

Wanna know who were significant contributors on our team for this window of opportunity?

Rafer Alton
Shane Battier
Luther Head
Juwan Howard
Chuck Hayes
Bonzi Wells
Dikembe Mutombo
Kirk Snyder
Jake Tsakalidis

Looking back at this, it's cringeworthy. Carol Dawson sank Yao & Tmac's chances long before their back and feet went out. We didn't put together a legit title threat team until 08-09 and by then McGrady was done and Yao was only barely hanging on.

 

wow, i almost forgot him a rockets...
why on earth does he jump out n try to remind us he is a loser.

 

No way! That 08-09 team, with a healthy TMac, could have been an even better team than 17-18.

Yao/Mutombo/Hayes
Scola/Landry
Artest/Battier
McGrady/Artest/Wafer
Brooks/Lowry

Yao and TMac were both top-10 players in the NBA, and Artest was a top-25 impact player. Artest, Battier, Mutombo and even Hayes were all top-rated defensive players. Scola, Landry, Brooks, Lowry were young but improving with such spectacular momentum that the team has really transformed itself going into the playoffs. (Brooks would win MIP the very next season, Lowry would grow into an all-star, and Scola is a legend.)

The team played the Lakers to a narrow 3:4 defeat without TMac, and with Yao lost to injury halfway through the series. The Lakers were not quite as dominant as the 16-19 Warriors but they were a 65-17 team who would go on to win back-to-back championships. Opponents after the Lakers were substantially weaker.

That team was deep and balanced, and had a good coach in Adelman. It didn't require a prime TMac to win. There was trade rumors of TMac for Billups+Prince, and TMac for Ray Allen. Either trade could have done the job in hindsight.

 

He had shoulder and knee surgery right after that 2008 Jazz series and then he had to get shoulder and knee surgery again mid season where he got shut down and he looked washed anyway.

His body just broke down, I'm not sure if it was entirely preventable. He also had the chronic back problems on top of all that.

EDIT: I might be misremembering. He looked washed the season after. Dude is just injury prone.

...

But I agree, that team was good enough. T-Mac was just washed.

 

I don’t hear Yao complaining

 

no, stop

17-18 Rockets are an all-time great level team that just so happened to not win a title, and they would slap the 09 team around, give them a wedgie, take their lunch money, and them stuff them in a locker

 

Let me get this straight. This man couldn't lead his team to a win over the expansion Bobcats but thought he could win a championship?