I hope that, when I get a real job, my entire tenure with an organization is not evaluated based upon one day's work. I hope that my coworkers, supervisors, and anybody who's looking can look at the body of work I've put together.
I think that (probably) T-Mac's superiors and teammates do that. Yao, Battier, Artest, and the rest all know that McGrady is one of the league's best. He's having a bad year, but he proved that he's a real competitor a long time ago. Morey and Adelman will look at all of his performances.
But Houston's shitty media isn't doing that. They are jumping on one bad night - and one particularly awful possession - and announcing that T-Mac is killing the Rockets.
Yeah, McGrady has had an awful season. There's no getting around that. But his failures this year have been brought on - largely, anyways - by poor health, not poor effort.
So we have the three amigos - Dick Justice, Jonathon Feigen (whom I can tolerate), and Fran Blinebury (whom I still believe is responsible for that tacky "T-Mac injury counter" featured prominently on the Chronicle's site) - all weighing in.
Blinebury is the most idiotic of the bunch, to tell the truth. He's had it in for T-Mac before, and this is the perfect opportunity to crucify the guy who carried the team last year. Let's fisk this shit:
The official play-by-play sheet simply says: Jamario Moon slam dunk.
Anybody who was watching at the Air Canada Centre or on TV knows it was the precise moment that Tracy McGrady quit on the Rockets.
Well, it was certainly a moment in which T-Mac just let Moon through. But, at this point, you're just asserting that McGrady "quit" (on the season and the Rockets as a whole). I doubt Blinebury has that sort of insight into T-Mac's head.
Yao Ming knows it. You could read it all over his scowling face as he sat on the bench through the final embarrassing minutes of horrid game.
Yao looked like he always does. He was a little extra frustrated, but he sucked last night, too. So maybe he was just generally pissed.
Rick Adelman knows it. You could read it between the lines of his post-game comments when he said he would not talk about any individual performances.
Adelman was pissed about everything and everyone. To quote from his comments last night about offensive execution: "there wasn't any." I doubt Adelman thought T-Mac's performance was any more shitty than anyone else.
Ron Artest knows it. You could tell that a week ago when Artest dragged his sore and ballooning right ankle onto the court to gut out an overtime win against the Jazz when McGrady made himself a late scratch during the post parade.
Okay. Here's the thing: Rockets fans and writers don't know what they fucking want from Tracy. We want him to rest his knee, but then we get all pissed off when he actually does so. What Artest did was great, and I hope he can shake McGrady out of his funk, but maybe Blinebury should MAKE UP HIS FUCKING MIND about what he wants McGrady to do before criticizing his every action regarding injury.
One could hope that Dikembe Mutombo was back in Houston watching and will arrive in Atlanta with his leadership in the form of a big stick.
Truth be told, it wouldn't make a difference, wouldn't matter. It would only elicit a few more whimpering excuses from McGrady and more disappointment down the line.
Jesus, Blinebury, tell us how you really feel. Look, if you're dissapointed with T-Mac's stay in Houston, you haven't been paying attention. Remember last year? When Yao went out? When, in the final game of the Jazz series, he scored 40 points but still couldn't get the Rockets past the first round? Fuck you, Blinebury. This is like complaining about how Bagwell couldn't play in most of 2005. Only nobody would do that, because Bags is white.
As I said, he's in a shooting slump and he's battling injury. But y'all complain when he scratches himself from the lineup and complain when he doesn't. Get over it.
Oh, it was so much more than just 2-for-9 shooting and 4 points in 27 minutes. It was aimless shuffling around the court on offense and defense. It was standing five feet behind the 3-point line, feet rooted to one spot, and simply playing pitch and catch with the ball.
That was ONE FREAKING POSSESSION! Fucking Christ, what the fuck?
Just say this: He is an extraordinary talent - T-Mac - who is capable of taking your breath away. Yet as a competitor - Tiny Tim-mac - he can be blown away in a gentle breeze.
Ack! Utah! 40 points! McGrady over Shawn Bradley! Winning streak! Goddammit you fucks, pay attention! He's a competitor, and anyone who says differently isn't watching.
This is not the first time that McGrady has revealed himself, having bailed out on the Raptors as an up-and-coming phenom and quit - flat-out admitting publicly that he didn't try - on the Magic to get himself traded out of Orlando.
Yeah, Orlando sucked. I'd want to get out of that team, too. And what are you saying, that he wants out of Houston? Because this is probably his best chance to win anything, and he knows it.
If McGrady wants to rehab his sore left knee or run off to a retreat and get his chakras back in balance, let him. If he wants to return to the club somewhere down the road in a few weeks or few months and contribute a few - or a few dozen - big buckets in a playoff game, well, they'll be appreciated. But they won't be expected.
And if he did that, you'd bitch about that, too. Fuck you.
I don't have time to go through all of this shit. Justice's post is more of the same (including the ridiculous idea that Luther Head plays better when T-Mac is out; even if that's true, he still sucks). However, he comes off as downright reasonable at the end - this isn't the end of the world, and McGrady can still get healthy.
Feigen's column at least has this tidbit:
He said later that he grew frustrated that he did not get enough shots to get in a rhythm. He said the spacing was bad. He said there was poor execution.
I think that this is probably closer to the truth. McGrady, frustrated by the fact that EVERYONE on the team was getting owned, gave up. That's not excusable, but it's understandable. It would be an example of the "If y'all aren't going to do your jobs, I'm not going to do mine" attitude, which can motivate if used correctly.
One last thing: a response from Feigen's post.
I really wish they had blown it up and started over around Yao.The team is built around Yao already. T-Mac and Yao continue to have good chemistry, and no one else on the team is quite as good as McGrady at getting the ball to Yao in the post. Yao is the machine around which the Rockets are built; everything else is ancillary. Yao is the Rockets' most important possession - on the court, as well as in getting crucial deals in China. Everybody else is in place to either do things Yao can't do or to get the ball to him. T-Mac, when healthy, does both.
We'll see what happens in coming weeks. My bet: T-Mac gets better and comes back strong.
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