Tracy McGrady, a sublime scorer with a short playoff resume, heads to Hall of Fame
Through four games of the first round of the 2003 NBA playoffs, Tracy McGrady was the best player on the planet. He averaged 36.3 points on 51.3 percent shooting as his Orlando Magic took a 3-1 lead over the heavily favored Detroit Pistons.
McGrady made it clear, after a Game 4 win, how he felt about his team’s chances in the series,
“It feels good to get in the second round,” he said.
Only McGrady didn’t get to the second round. Instead, he struggled over the series’ final three games, shooting 36.1 percent as Detroit won out. That quote stuck with him for the rest of his 15-year NBA career, and summed up, for many, his NBA life: a virtuoso individual performer who couldn’t win when it counted.
That’s why McGrady’s induction into the Naismith Hall of Fame on Friday night comes with more scrutiny than many, and highlights the divide between the those who see McGrady as an all-time great, and those who see someone who was merely very good.
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What’s indisputable is McGrady’s vast individual ability. At 6-foot-8 with long arms, ridiculous athleticism and smooth movements, there was virtually nothing McGrady couldn’t do when it came to scoring. He averaged more than 20 points for eight straight seasons – including an eye-popping 32.1 in 2002-03, a season that also saw him finish with a 30.3 player efficiency rating.
To put those numbers in context: only Kobe Bryant, who averaged 35.4 points in 2006, has averaged more points than McGrady did this century. And only five players in that timeframe – LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Stephen Curry, Dwyane Wade and Russell Westbrook – have posted a higher single-season PER.
It was that incandescent scoring ability that lifted McGrady to seven all-NBA teams, seven all-star appearances and earned him back-to-back scoring titles in 2003 and 2004. And while more people likely pay attention to the latter two accomplishments, it is the former – seven times being selected as one of the NBA’s 15 best players – that is the bedrock of McGrady’s Hall of Fame case.
There have been 41 players in the history of the league that have made at least seven all-NBA or ABA teams. Of those 41 players, 30 are already in the Hall of Fame – including McGrady’s induction. As for the remaining 10, they are either retired stars who will undoubtedly waltz into the Hall themselves when eligible (Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Steve Nash) or active players who will when their careers are over (James, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Wade and Kevin Durant).
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Still, even in that rarified air, that lack of postseason success stands out. Sure, plenty of guys among those 41 haven’t won a championship. But all of them had advanced to varying degrees in the postseason – many of them all the way to the NBA Finals. (The one who notably hasn’t, Paul, still at least has made it out of the first round on four occasions).
In a sport where one individual can have an inordinately large impact on the team’s overall success, it’s easy to point to that glaring lack of postseason success and discredit his accomplishments.
But that point, too, can be countered. When he left the Toronto Raptors in 2000 to join the Magic, he was expecting to play alongside Grant Hill – who, at the time, was among the league’s top five or 10 players. Instead, Hill had a series of injuries, and in McGrady’s four seasons with the team he played a combined 47 games. That left McGrady with a woeful supporting cast, one ill-equipped to do anything more than be carried to a bottom-rung playoff spot in the East.
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In 2004, McGrady was dealt to Houston to play alongside Yao Ming. After that duo’s first season together, in which Houston won 51 games with each of them playing the entire season before losing to the Dallas Mavericks in seven games, either Ming or McGrady would wind up suffering an injury for at least some portion of each of the next five seasons. By the time McGrady was dealt to the Knicks in 2010, he was nothing more than an expiring contract, used to help clear the decks for a potential chasing of James as a free agent.
The situation McGrady finds himself in now is one that will likely be repeated in the future by both Vince Carter and Carmelo Anthony, a pair of similarly explosive scorers who have also received plenty of criticism for failing to lead their teams to more postseason success. But while many won’t like it, they – like McGrady – will eventually be enshrined in Springfield, Mass., once their playing days are over.
That doesn’t mean everyone will have to like it, or agree with it.
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