Just a week off the news of Allen Iverson retiring another beast player of the 2000’s calls it a career.
Tracy McGrady calls it a career after 16 NBA seasons.
With people like me you see just Rockets McGrady and but I’ve been digging around and even though his stint at the Rockets was his longest and his best. He did have a career before that. Lets have a look.
T-Mac was picked 9th overall in the 97 NBA Draft by the Toronto Raptors. He played for Toronto for three seasons. Mainly as a bench player but as the minutes rose, so did his stats. In year three with the Raptors he averaged 31 minutes per game and played 79 of the usual 82 (that’s his career high, he has never had a full season). He also averaged over ten points for the first time in his career with 15.4 PPG. (year 1 – 7 PPG, year 2 – 9.3 PPG). In McGrady’s final year, Toronto made the playoffs so with that positive correlation it gave Orlando a reason to sign him.
In his stint in Orlando he earned Most Improved Player of the year in 2001. In the 02-03 season McGrady averaged 32.1 points per game and captured the NBA scoring title, becoming the youngest player to do since the merger. he once again captured the NBA scoring title, averaging 28 points per game and on March 10th 2004 against the Washington Wizards he scored his career high 62 points.
After a very successful stint as an individual but with injury battles at Orlando he moved on to Houston via trade and the McGrady-Ming duo is born.
With McGrady being “the man” and running the Houston offence it was Tracy’s time to shine. Another scoring title, multiple playoff runs but unfortunately ended up with the short straw for many years (not to McGrady’s fault) and to add on with that injuries plagued him (multiple back spasms) and his teammates.
With more personal achievements but still no team accolades he then played for New York, Detroit, Atlanta played in China and now another great career ends.
Thank you T-Mac.
