It’s the Mr. 12th Man Beauty Contest Monday for the Bulls. They’ll take a look at Tracy McGrady, a sort basketball version of Ms. Senior America. He left you gasping and your heart beating 10 years ago. He feels he’s still got something to offer. But do you care anymore? The Bulls still need one more good looking perimeter scoring threat, preferably someone who can make a three-pointer when it matters against the likes of contenders like Miami, Orlando and Boston. The Bulls believe come playoff time they can be in that conversation. Can McGrady help them? Well, that Tracy McGrady of 2000 could, but this Tracy McGrady? The one who has had serious knee surgery to the point he couldn’t play consecutive games with the Knicks last season and they didn’t want him back, who was run out of Houston, essentially by his teammates for his disruptive attitude, and, of course, his own history of quitting on various teams and coaches, including Doc Rivers and his Orlando Magic, where in Orlando they still refer to McGrady in the media as “Me-Mac?” But can a person change, especially if he’s near career death? McGrady’s basketball career is at that point, and maybe he has had the epiphany and will devote himself one time to the greater good rather than his personal agenda. He has seen the light! He’s on a mission! At least that’s what McGrady’s benefactors insist. The Bulls merely are interested onlookers for now, likely doing a favor for McGrady’s agent, who also represents Derrick Rose. My sense is McGrady has a lot of persuading to do as the internal consensus at this point seems opposed to taking the chance on McGrady. The Bulls will keep their minds open for now. Why not? Read more: http://www.nba.com/bulls/news/smith_100726.html?rss=true
Sam Smith is such a blow hard and gets so much wrong that he is hard to read. For example, I'm sure the Heat didn't offer more than the $3M we could offer. Wow, Sam, an unguaranteed minimum contract. You are such a risk taker....
I've not been a big fan of getting TMac, but this is just silly. I'm always perplexed at the Bulls desire to try and make players abase themselves in some way. Why must the Bulls basically talk down a guy who they would want to be a part of their team? It’s like, if you went out to hire someone, would you say say “Hey, I can tell you’re really eager to work here, so I want to be very clear up front that I’m going to take advantage of that fact. Truth is, I really don’t want to hire you in the first place, but I’m going to do you a favor and hire you. But just so we’re clear, I’m doing you a huge favor. I actually think you’re an asshole and you’re not very good. So I’m going to pay you the minimum, and you could be gone at any time. I don’t care if you’ve been great anywhere else. In fact, I hold it against you, and don’t try to act great. No matter how good you are, you’ll work behind this other guy, because we just like him better”. Just because you've been a douche in the past, I'm going to do things to you that would irritate even reasonable people. If the Bulls ever offer a contract to Michael Ray Richardson, I expect they'll put a few lines of blow next to his contract just to see what happens.
I don't know why you read third hand accounts of tangentially related conversations and assume that somebody spit in somebody's eye. There's nothing but a huge ego being displayed here by Tmac the only guy actually quoted, why would you worry about somebody getting their feelings hurt even if these stories were true?
If the Bulls really are contenders, why should they play their roster game any different than the Lakers and Celtics of the 1980s? Those Celtics had a debilitated Pete Maravich and gave Bill Walton a chance. The Walton situation was a lot like TMac now - a gamble that he might be able to play some minutes on broken feet - and it paid off. The Lakers picked up guys like McAdoo, Mychal Thompson, Swen Nater, Mitch Kupchak, and Maurice Lucas (all bigs, FWIW) who all gave them some quality minutes on a gamble.
Again Denny your glaring lack of any historical knowledge is painful. The Walton situation was the polar opposite of this Tmac ordeal. Walton was perhaps the greatest proponent of team basketball in the history of the game. Tmac is one of the most selfish, egotistical players of the current generation. Walton was perhaps the greatest passing big man ever. And tmac at one point was a great scorer for a couple of seasons, but he's nowhere near there now.
You lecture me on historical knowledge, yet I posted a half dozen names that you seem to not even know. McAdoo is another one of your epitome of team basketball players, right? And he was seriously hurt for the better part of two seasons and looked completely washed up before the Lakers signed him at the age of 30. Sound familiar (TMac).
