Larry Brown Sports

Tracy McGrady has been playing in the Chinese Basketball Association this season, and it doesn’t sound like things are going very well. The former two-time NBA scoring champion ripped the referees after a recent loss, calling them “three blind mice” while threatening to leave the league after the season if the calls didn’t start improving.

Here’s what he wrote on his Weibo account, which is China’s equivalent to Twitter:

Based on this post by BeijingCream.com, it seems like T-Mac and his team had a legitimate reason to be upset.

McGrady didn’t get a foul call when he went up for a shot late his team’s game on Wednesday. The opposing team, Bayi, also seemed to benefit from not losing the ball when it looked like they committed a shot clock violation in the final minute. Instead of T-Mac’s Qingdao team getting the ball down 93-90, Bayi hit a three-pointer to go up 96-90.

T-Mac’s coach ended up pulling his players off the floor in protest.

Overall, things are not going too well for McGrady. According to standings posted at Asia-Basket, McGrady’s team is last in the league at 2-17.

You can watch video of the ending from Wednesday’s game below:

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Either Tracy McGrady is too old, or he is just not a good fit for the Hawks. T-Mac is averaging only 18 minutes per game, which is not something he is accustomed to. He has been quietly frustrated about his lack of playing time throughout the entire season, but McGrady finally decided to go public with his complaints after Saturday’s 97-77 loss to the Blazers.

“I’m tired of this (expletive),” McGrady said according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “You can put that in the paper, I don’t give a (expletive).”

McGrady played only 4:39 of Saturday’s game and sat during the entire second half. The Hawks are 19-12 and have had success this season, so it’s obvious the coaching staff doesn’t consider T-Mac to be a valuable asset. Considering this is his 14th season of an injury-plagued career, McGrady shouldn’t be surprised by his limited role. He does, however, think he deserves an explanation.

“If you don’t feel I can help, come tell me that,” he said. “He ain’t told me nothing. I just want to help these guys win, man, which I know I can. But, damn, four minutes? … I like it here. I like the guys. That’s what I love most about it. I like the guys in this locker room. But at the same time, I still can play. No doubt in my mind.”

The Hawks are on their way to the playoffs, but it’s clear that isn’t the most important thing for T-Mac. Maybe his God-given talents are still hindering his practice ability, which has discouraged Atlanta’s coaches from putting him on the floor.

We all know Tracy McGrady is a talented player. When healthy and in the prime of his career, McGrady was one of the most explosive players in the NBA. What hindered him at times was his work ethic. As you may remember, former Houston coach Jeff Van Gundy and GM Daryl Morey said last year that McGrady could be a Hall of Famer if he worked harder in practice.  Now that he is coming toward the end of his career, McGrady is willing to admit they are right.

“I’m just not a great practice player,” McGrady said in an interview with Chris Tomasson of FoxSports.com. “That’s what I wasn’t. I was a gamer. You put me in a game and the lights are bright and the stands are filled. That’s just what I was. But you practice, get up and down and do this. That wasn’t my thing.

“The crazy thing about it is… there’s a lot of players like that. People are so scared to really voice who they are. They want to be politically correct. Just scared to see what other people’s perceptions are… When you have God-given talent, I think that that kind of hinders your practice habits and that’s what I think it did to me. Had I not been so talented, I probably would have busted my (butt) in practice.”

Very few players actually enjoy practice.  McGrady is right in saying a lot of players dog it during practice, but I don’t think talent necessarily has anything to do with it.  There are some players who feel entitled and think they don’t have to practice as hard, but there are plenty of talented players who give it 100 percent.  In fact, they are all talented — that’s why they’re in the NBA.

To me this is a cop out by McGrady. You didn’t practice hard because you didn’t want to.  That has very little — if anything — to do with talent.  Just as there are plenty of crappy players who are crappy because they never put in effort during practice, there are plenty of players with “God-given” talent who have gotten better by busting their humps.

Like many other countries across the globe in the year 2011, Greece is not in the best economic condition. Strikes and riots have taken their toll as the country heads for bankruptcy, but we won’t bore you with politics since that certainly isn’t our thing. The only reason we bring it up is to lead you into the idiotic statement Tracy McGrady made on Twitter on Monday regarding Greece.  Here is the brilliant tweet that I Am a GM shared with us:

I must admit that we don’t know exactly what McGrady means by that, but it sounds pretty offensive and wouldn’t be the first time T-Mac has had something idiotic to say.  A comment like that is one of those that reaffirms what many believe about multimillion-dollar athletes: They think they’re better than everyone.  In this case, it sounds like McGrady thinks he’s better than an entire country.

Tracy McGrady has been in the league since 1997 when he was drafted 9th overall by the Toronto Raptors. He forced his way out of Toronto after three years and went to Orlando where he led the league in scoring twice. Though T-Mac’s scoring ability and talent is undeniable, there have always been two knocks against him: he could never get out of the playoffs, and more recently, he’s been unable to stay healthy.

McGrady’s disappointing career path makes one wonder what could have been for the man who once averaged 32.1 points per game (!!!) in a season. Apparently his former coach Jeff Van Gundy and Houston’s GM, Daryl Morey still feel the same way.

Both men were in attendance for the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and the subject was Malcolm Gladwell’s book that surmises it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve greatness in a given field. According to Zach Lowe of SI who was there for the conference, both men used T-Mac as an example of underachieving.

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The NBA season has yet to even begin and everyone wants a piece of the Miami Heat.  Charles Barkley thinks the new Big Three are punks and it sounds like he wants a piece of them in the boxing ring.  LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh all got killed with their latest Q Score ratings of popularity among sports figures, reflecting the fact that people have already developed a burning hatred for the Heat and their new superstars.

Then there are those who actually want a piece of the Heat — as in, want to be a part of what they’ve got going.  Penny Hardaway made his best effort to get the Heat to notice him and bring him back in a limited role, to no avail.  Now, Tracy McGrady says he speaks for the rest of the league in saying he wishes he was given the same opportunity Miami’s Big Three have in front of them.

I am envious (of Miami’s Big Three). I’m jealous as s**t,” McGrady chuckled Tuesday morning before a Pistons workout. “I look at all the teams I’ve been on, and I never had a Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the same team. I’m jealous, but I’m happy for them. I hope they win 10 damn championships.”

Of course, McGrady hopes they start winning those “10 damn championships” after he retires and is no longer a Detroit Piston.  Or does he?  This is a perfect example of what we talked about with regard to the NBA trying to prevent players from calling the shots with trades.

It’s rumored that Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul want to join Amare Stoudemire to create the next Big Three with the Knicks.  Since the Celtics formed the Big Three of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen and won a championship right away, players are aware that it works.  They know teams can bring in three superstars and still finagle a way to make it work with the salary cap rules that are in place.  It’s the new fad across the NBA and everyone wants to be a part of it.

The Rockets may have lost Game 2 of their first round series with the Blazers on Tuesday night, but they’re still tied 1-1 in the best of seven and best of all, heading home for two straight games. Given the way they played in Game 1 and that it took 42 from Brandon Roy for Portland to win on Tuesday, it’s quite conceivable that the Rockets win the series and get to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since ’96-’97. In four of the past five seasons, Houston’s been eliminated in the first round despite having three 50-win seasons. The wise fan will point out that the team was talented but had the misfortune of playing other very good teams in the Western Conference. Sure, they did lose to the Lakers one year (the year the Lakers lost to the Pistons in the finals), but Houston certainly could have beaten the Jazz either of the years they lost to them in the first round.

Between his years with the Rockets and his days with the Magic and Raptors before that, it’s no secret that Tracy McGrady’s never advanced past the first round of the playoffs in his career. Seven playoff berths, seven first round exits. As I outlined above, the Rockets have an excellent chance to advance to the second round, but this time, it’s sans T-Mac. McGrady’s knee injury has him on the sidelines and has the team actually playing better without him. T-Mac realizes what this all means and he’s anxious to be back out there:

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