Today’s Tracy McGrady Update
SportingNews
As we continue to try and
make sense of T-Mac’s return, there have been two developments, each pulling us in seemingly opposite directions.
Adelman isn’t just going stick McGrady back in a starting slot; he’ll figure out how he makes sense with this team, and at the same time, how he might change it. And, given this squad’s highly-adaptive rotation, it also makes sense that T-Mac’s role won’t be cut-and-dry even when he’s 100 percent. From the Houston Chronicle:
Rockets coach Rick Adelman doesn’t know where he will get the seven to eight minutes each game he plans to give to Tracy McGrady. But he guesses they will come from several players and could change from game to game, depending on matchups. […]
"We have a nice rotation going," Adelman said. "It’s not that simple plugging somebody back in. It changes the dynamic. We’re trying to do it with the least amount of upheaval on the team. It’s going to affect everybody, really. But I think we can work it out. I don’t want to play Shane (Battier) that many minutes. Trevor (Ariza) has been playing a lot of minutes. We can figure it out. We just have to keep evaluating it."
Murky, I know. Sorry, fantasy basketball fanatics. But this does make the most basketball sense, which you can pretty much expect from Adelman. It’s a good thing that the rest of the team has already been living this dream all season, and that while Ariza professes to have no problem with the heavy workload this season, he’s used to varying minutes.
But hark, there’s another development.
Chris Sheridan of ESPN.com says that "Tracy McGrady is likely going to end up getting traded at some time in the next seven months—maybe in a sign-and-trade deal after he becomes a free agent July 1, maybe at the trade deadline in mid-February, or maybe even sooner." The
Knicks are supposedly the ones pushing the hardest. They want McGrady’s gigantic expiring deal so they can go after two max players in 2010.
Awesome, right? It also might be fun to see T-Mac in D’Antoni-land for a few months, diminished as he may be. For the Rockets to bite, though, they’d have to be willing to give up that cap space themselves. Do they really want David Lee? Not sure why they would when they have Scola. Al Harrington? Maybe, they need scorers. Eddy Curry? That name still makes me laugh. Seems that, as with the Knicks’ pursuit of every All-Star ever next summer, this may all be in Walsh’s head.
What does this mean for the Rockets? Well, since T-Mac’s value is as expiring money, they don’t really need to showcase him. In fact, they don’t even need to play him if they think they’re trading him. I guess they don’t want to tip their hand. At the same time, the way Adelman’s going about this, it seems like he’s presuming he will have McGrady to work with for at least a little while. Then again, what choice does he have?