T-Mac Says a lot of things...

[Whisper]

NBA.Com:

Fran Session: Hard to know what to believe with T-Mac
By Fran Blinebury, for NBA.com
Posted Feb 18 2009 5:34PM

HOUSTON -- Tracy McGrady says the season is over for him. Then again, McGrady says lots of things.



McGrady said he never wanted to leave Orlando. But then he said that he didn't always try hard for the Magic, and he shut it down for the last 15 games in the spring of 2004 because, while he was leading the league in scoring, the team wasn't going anywhere.

McGrady said that he came to Houston to lead the Rockets to great things. And then he promptly handed off the mantle of responsibility to Yao Ming.

McGrady said prior to the 2007 first-round playoff series against the Utah Jazz, "It's all on me." Then after the Rockets lost, he said, "It was never on me."

McGrady said he "was tired" in the second half of Game 6 of the 2008 playoff elimination loss to the Jazz, noting defender Andrei Kirilenko got to come off the bench fresh and he had to play the whole game.

The entire 2008-09 season has been more a frustrating verbal volleyball match between McGrady and the club rather than the hoped-for championship run that was anticipated when the Rockets traded for Ron Artest last summer. McGrady had arthroscopic surgery to clean up his left knee on May 6 and arrived four months later saying his recovery would be a process, but he would get stronger. Then he didn't.

There were last-minute scratches from the lineup that did not sit well in the locker room. There was even a short-lived plan for him to play only one game of every back-to-back on the schedule.

McGrady slammed down a vintage dunk in the face of Tyrus Thomas earlier this month and said he proved to himself that he was back, finishing with 16 points and six assists in a win over Chicago. Six nights later, McGrady went up for a dunk and embarrassingly clanked the ball off the underside of the rim, finishing with three points on 1-for-9 shooting in an ugly loss at Milwaukee. He said there was no pain in his knee, just a mental block.

And then things got weird.

A week ago, McGrady said he was not even considering surgery. He and the Rockets said his MRI showed no changes. He had not improved, but neither had anything gotten worse. He had been playing. He was feeling better and saying he'd turned the corner. Doctor after doctor said that McGrady could play and would grow stronger if he did. McGrady said nothing had changed in his condition. Now he needs microfracture surgery?

The Rockets weren't saying for sure, perhaps because the day after McGrady made his announcement to ESPN and posted the decision to have surgery on his own Web site, he still had not contacted the team.

"I found out the way everybody else did ... in the paper," coach Rick Adelman said following Wednesday's practice. "There's a right way to do things and this was not the right way to do it. I think there should be protocol there."

None of that means McGrady does not require surgery, only that there are so many inconsistencies in the information about his condition, as there have been all season. But that has been the thread running through the storyline of McGrady's 12-season NBA career -- a wildly divergent mix of extraordinary talent with less than satisfying overall results.

For every video clip of T-Mac once scoring 13 points in the last 35 seconds to take down the San Antonio Spurs, there is a side of the ledger that says his teams are 0-7 in the first round of the playoffs, blowing a 3-1 lead to Detroit when he was still with the Magic and blowing a pair of 2-0 leads to Dallas and Utah with the Rockets.

He has a contract that pays $21 million this season and $23 million next season. Yet the last remnants of the superstar label have slowly been scratched off as the Rockets have reluctantly been forced to accept that T-Mac is no longer the player they traded for and maybe never was who they believed he could be --- a torchbearer who leads.

Now, as he approached his 30th birthday, in May, McGrady says he's opting for the serious microfracture surgery, the kind that has been like an unknown abyss for NBA players.

Can he make it all the way back like Amar'e Stoudemire, Kenyon Martin and Jason Kidd? Does he return as a shadow of his former self like Chris Webber and Penny Hardaway? Or does it take him right to the end like Terrell Brandon and Jamal Mashburn?

Was it a coincidence that the pendulum quickly swung to surgery just when McGrady's name was bubbling up in trade rumors, even though the team denied interest in moving him?

McGrady says he's done for the season. Then again, he says lots of things.

It's what he does now that will say the most about T-Mac.

I always did think that this is what seperated T-Mac from the true elites of the game. He's just like his cousin. Talent-wise he could be the best of the best, but that's all he ever relied on. That drive that fire just isn't there. When he took the Magic up on the Pistons he already claimed the 2nd round, and relaxed, that's what causes his demise. He doesn't have that TRUE killer instinct to just keep on going. He can step it up definitely, but that extra certain attitude isn't there.