03 T-Mac V Current Shai

[tsherkin]

Agree that Shai has a better head for the game in his ability to avoid negative plays (Chris Paul influence? ) and that any preference for McGrady is theoretical based on his physical attributes and general skillset at his size (e.g. theoretically, McGrady could be a better defender than Shai is). Strongly disagree that McGrady was somehow a limited playmaker; if anything, I would say his assists understate how capable a passer he was. But Shai is both much more consistent and (at this point) proven as a league-best player in a way McGrady never was.

This is what, the third season that Shai's a 30/5/6 ish type player, right? He's having his best offensive season to date, of course, but we've seen something at least near to this level more than just once, so I'd agree that he's a more proven player than 03 McGrady, for sure.

[Doctor MJ]

There's nothing about those last two seasons that seems off compared to his norms. It's just that '02-03 when TMac was 23 was the outlier, and everyone just assumed he'd get better after that because that's the norm in basketball.

Sure, but it ignores that the second season after his big peak was the 04-05 season and the start of the offensive renaissance, which he struggled to take advantage of because of team tempo and his health.

I'd say this sums up TMac well. People thought that because got a decent number of assists he must be a good playmaker, but really he was just an athlete who was allowed to play in a proto-helio fashion that he never should have been slotted into.

Mmmm, that isn't quite true. His play in Detroit certainly wasn't that, for example.

I think McGrady was a little better than you're selling here, personally. Maybe not a TON better, and I recognize that there's a good chance he was just super hot in 2003. But after Toronto, he had both health and roster issues confounding everything he did. And the coaching on top of that didn't really unleash him to his maximum potential, but honestly, by the time he hit the Rockets, he wasn't the same guy as he'd been before. He had his good nights where he was mobile and free and everything, but it wasn't even close to what he should have been while still in his 20s. You can see it in his draw rate, and eventually in his FT% and his fall-off finishing in close. Certainly, McGrady wasn't secretly Magic or anything like that, but he had a pretty decent head on his shoulders for moving the ball.

Shai is certainly a better shooter. He also seems to have a more controlled game. McGrady was pretty loose with long twos, kind of like Kobe; both the same, very good at it but overusing it. It was the style at the time, but he also shot too many 3s after 2003, in part because he was struggling to do what he'd done before a lot of the time. I can very much see the pro-Shai argument, I'm more here to defend T-Mac a little bit from some of the criticism he's receiving.

So, I hear you primarily defending against the raw negativity I'm throwing out and I think that's a responsible, positive response.

It's just, he's being compared with '24-25 Shai here, so no one should see it as close. TMac had one really impressive year, and in that year he wasn't anywhere near the MVP candidate Shai was last year, and Shai is an infinitely stronger candidate this year compared to last, so what are we doing here?

I think clearly nostalgia and "What ifs?" are doing the heavy lifting when TMac gets in a conversation like this. People think that that big scorer from their childhood would be a super-duper star today because everything's easier, right?

[tsherkin]

It's just, he's being compared with '24-25 Shai here, so no one should see it as close. TMac had one really impressive year,

That said, in this context, we are directly and specifically comparing his one good year to Shai's present year. That said, what has come before and what came after for McGrady is somewhat informative, but only so relevant, wouldn't you agree?

and in that year he wasn't anywhere near the MVP candidate Shai was last year, and Shai is an infinitely stronger candidate this year compared to last, so what are we doing here?

Again, I don't want to die on a pro-McGrady hill here, because Shai is amazing. But McGrady [iwas[/i] a .262 WS/48 guy on a league-leading +9.8 OBPM that season. And he did it on an absolute garbage squad, which isn't usually the place you find that sort of wrecking ball from guys who aren't actually very good. It strikes me that the way you're painting him that he has no business in this discussion at all, and while I can very much see the pro-Shai position, it shouldn't come at the cost of denigrating what McGrady did in that season.

In Shai's last 3 seasons (2023 forward, I mean), he's enjoyed considerably more help than McGrady did in 2003. He is obviously amazing regardless of that, and his performance has reflected it, but comparing these guys directly should come with that in mind when you're looking at any specific stats. Last year, for example, the Thunder were the best 3pt shooting team in the league. And this year, they continue to be fantastic about ball protection, with Wiggins, Dort and Joe all sub-10% TOV guys (low-volume dudes, but it matters in aggregate when they lead the league in TOV%). They are also the best FT shooting team in the league.

Little details like that matter when you're looking at performance from a guy who didn't enjoy another guy on the team who started more than 55 games (and THAT guy was SHAWN KEMP). He had Mike Miller, his best other offensive help, for half a season (49 GP). Grant Hill played 29. They traded for Giricek mid-season and he played 27 games for them.

I could go on. But again, while reinforcing how amazing Shai is, I'd counsel that you be a little more careful about comparing individual numbers and stuff when realizing that McGrady was playing on a team that might get overwhelmed by an NCAA D1 squad if he sat.

[Doctor MJ]

It's just, he's being compared with '24-25 Shai here, so no one should see it as close. TMac had one really impressive year,

That said, in this context, we are directly and specifically comparing his one good year to Shai's present year. That said, what has come before and what came after for McGrady is somewhat informative, but only so relevant, wouldn't you agree?

and in that year he wasn't anywhere near the MVP candidate Shai was last year, and Shai is an infinitely stronger candidate this year compared to last, so what are we doing here?

Again, I don't want to die on a pro-McGrady hill here, because Shai is amazing. But McGrady [iwas[/i] a .262 WS/48 guy on a league-leading +9.8 OBPM that season. And he did it on an absolute garbage squad, which isn't usually the place you find that sort of wrecking ball from guys who aren't actually very good. It strikes me that the way you're painting him that he has no business in this discussion at all, and while I can very much see the pro-Shai position, it shouldn't come at the cost of denigrating what McGrady did in that season.

In Shai's last 3 seasons (2023 forward, I mean), he's enjoyed considerably more help than McGrady did in 2003. He is obviously amazing regardless of that, and his performance has reflected it, but comparing these guys directly should come with that in mind when you're looking at any specific stats. Last year, for example, the Thunder were the best 3pt shooting team in the league. And this year, they continue to be fantastic about ball protection, with Wiggins, Dort and Joe all sub-10% TOV guys (low-volume dudes, but it matters in aggregate when they lead the league in TOV%). They are also the best FT shooting team in the league.

Little details like that matter when you're looking at performance from a guy who didn't enjoy another guy on the team who started more than 55 games (and THAT guy was SHAWN KEMP). He had Mike Miller, his best other offensive help, for half a season (49 GP). Grant Hill played 29. They traded for Giricek mid-season and he played 27 games for them.

I could go on. But again, while reinforcing how amazing Shai is, I'd counsel that you be a little more careful about comparing individual numbers and stuff when realizing that McGrady was playing on a team that might get overwhelmed by an NCAA D1 squad if he sat.

Thing is, the question of "What could TMac have done in '02-03 if he'd only had better teammates?" yields the instant counter "He had better teammates in Toronto & Houston, and the team didn't get massively better, which leads to the conclusion that he was probably at his best when playing with teammates who weren't very good, which is normal for extreme athletes who aren't great at team play."

[tsherkin]

Thing is, the question of "What could TMac have done in '02-03 if he'd only had better teammates?" yields the instant counter "He had better teammates in Toronto & Houston,

Sure, but we can wipe the Toronto part of that away because he was drafted out of HS as an 18 year-old and he wasn't unique in struggling early on with that. Kobe and Garnett did as well. Not really sure why you'd expect him to hit the league crushing it from the word go when even Lebron had some issues adapting to NBA defenses.

And then again, Houston was marked by remarkably slow pace, and a lot of injuries.

and the team didn't get massively better, which leads to the conclusion that he was probably at his best when playing with teammates who weren't very good, which is normal for extreme athletes who aren't great at team play."

And we come back to this. I really don't agree with the idea that he wasn't good at team play. He was showcasing playmaking skills in Toronto, in Orlando, in Houston and even in Detroit and San Antonio at the end of his career. His offensive impact numbers from 01-07 are pretty clearly good, but he falls off after that as his body declines and his role changes. I really don't think ignoring that JVG did nothing right with how to use T-Mac is the right move here, either. The FASTEST the Rockets ever played was 90.7 poss/g from 05-07, and that really did no favors for McGrady. He was a good isolation scorer, but that was the opposite of what made sense. That was JVG rocking that late 90s/early 00s mentality and avoiding the need for transition defense by grinding it out, and that's a relevant consideration when discussing T-Mac's play.

Again, in abstract, not so much relative to Shai.

[Doctor MJ]

Thing is, the question of "What could TMac have done in '02-03 if he'd only had better teammates?" yields the instant counter "He had better teammates in Toronto & Houston,

Sure, but we can wipe the Toronto part of that away because he was drafted out of HS as an 18 year-old and he wasn't unique in struggling early on with that. Kobe and Garnett did as well. Not really sure why you'd expect him to hit the league crushing it from the word go when even Lebron had some issues adapting to NBA defenses.

And then again, Houston was marked by remarkably slow pace, and a lot of injuries.

and the team didn't get massively better, which leads to the conclusion that he was probably at his best when playing with teammates who weren't very good, which is normal for extreme athletes who aren't great at team play."

And we come back to this. I really don't agree with the idea that he wasn't good at team play. He was showcasing playmaking skills in Toronto, in Orlando, in Houston and even in Detroit and San Antonio at the end of his career. His offensive impact numbers from 01-07 are pretty clearly good, but he falls off after that as his body declines and his role changes. I really don't think ignoring that JVG did nothing right with how to use T-Mac is the right move here, either. The FASTEST the Rockets ever played was 90.7 poss/g from 05-07, and that really did no favors for McGrady. He was a good isolation scorer, but that was the opposite of what made sense. That was JVG rocking that late 90s/early 00s mentality and avoiding the need for transition defense by grinding it out, and that's a relevant consideration when discussing T-Mac's play.

Again, in abstract, not so much relative to Shai.

The fact that TMac exploded as a volume scorer the moment he got to Orlando at age 21 makes it hard for me to take seriously the idea that we should treat 20 year old TMac as a high school kid. Clearly he just took to being a volume shooter far more than he took to being a secondary threat, no?

And while that's not damning to him when considering him as a volume scorer, when we consider how many years of inefficient volume chucking he had in Houston on teams that clearly had plenty of talent, it really cries out for him needing to find ways to adapt to good talent around him in ways he just never did.

Re: Houston slow pace. Well I'll say, it's not unreasonable to ask what the coach should have done different here, but from a perspective of "If only he'd played with quality teammates", he spent most of his career with quality teammates, and the result was giving those quality teammates long summer vacation.

Incidentally regarding Kobe/KG/LeBron:

- As you know I'm quite critical of Kobe. The connection between Kobe & TMac has always been there and it's surely related to why this thread is made. I think what Kobe's got going for him is that he really did refine his game with age up to a point peaking in relative efficiency like a normal star in his mid-to-late 20s whereas those were the years for TMac when he was a very inefficient chucker.

- KG & LeBron were extremely impactful by their 2nd season. I'm perfectly happy to cut TMac slack for his rookie campaign, but he really never figure out how to impact the game in his next couple seasons in Toronto.

Re: showcasing playmaking skills. I would say that there are selected highlights that looked nice, but there was never a point in TMac's career where he demonstrated the kind of old man game that we got from, say, Vince Carter. I think we tend to get too excited by some nice highlight passes for young guys when the real proof-in-pudding means stuff like "Don't chuck shots you can't hit when you have teammates who can do plenty without you."

[MiamiBulls]

Have always been fascinated as to why Tracy Mcgrady gets propogated into historical conversations. It's like talking about 1996 Terrell Brandon and comparing him to 2011 Derrick Rose or 1996 Terrell Brandon v. 2000 Gary Payton, which is something people don't do.

Tracy Mcgrady as a scorer has very serious scalability issues.

One thing I have always asked was, why was Mcgrady so inefficient scoring the basketball in the 1999-2000 Season playing next to Vince Carter in Toronto where he had sufficient help on the roster?

One thing that always noticeable is his very poor FT shooting. Also throughout his prime Mcgrady was a shockingly poor rim finisher even for a Guard.

In 2001 Season amongst 26 Guards who averaged 3.5 FGA within 5FT from the basket, Tracy Mcgrady had the 9th lowest fg% at the rim, while being no. 1 rim FGA amongst Guards.

2002 amongst 30 Guards who averaged 3.5 FGA within 5FT, Mcgrady’s rim fg% 13th Worst out of 30, while being no. 1 in the NBA amongst Guards rim FGA.

2003 amongst 31 Guards who averaged at least 3.5 FGA within 5FT, Tracy had the 11th worst fg% at the rim out of 31 players, while being 3rd in the NBA amongst Guards in rim FGA.

2004 amongst 32 Guards who averaged at least 3.5 FGA within 5FT, Mcgrady ranked 19th out 32 Guards in rim Fg%.

2005 amongst 34 Guards who averaged averaged at least 3.5 FGA, Mcgrady ranked 21st out 34 players in rim fg%.

Mcgrady wasn't good at a converting on the easiest most efficient shots on the at both the FT Line & at the rim.

"2003 Mcgrady" is more fantasy fiction than actual reality

[falcolombardi]

Have always been fascinated as to why Tracy Mcgrady gets propogated into historical conversations. It's like talking about 1996 Terrell Brandon and comparing him to 2011 Derrick Rose or 1996 Terrell Brandon v. 2000 Gary Payton, which is something people don't do.

Tracy Mcgrady as a scorer has very serious scalability issues.

One thing I have always asked was, why was Mcgrady so inefficient scoring the basketball in the 1999-2000 Season playing next to Vince Carter in Toronto where he had sufficient help on the roster?

One thing that always noticeable is his very poor FT shooting. Also throughout his prime Mcgrady was a shockingly poor rim finisher even for a Guard.

In 2001 Season amongst 26 Guards who averaged 3.5 FGA within 5FT from the basket, Tracy Mcgrady had the 9th lowest fg% at the rim, while being no. 1 rim FGA amongst Guards.

2002 amongst 30 Guards who averaged 3.5 FGA within 5FT, Mcgrady’s rim fg% 13th Worst out of 30, while being no. 1 in the NBA amongst Guards rim FGA.

2003 amongst 31 Guards who averaged at least 3.5 FGA within 5FT, Tracy had the 11th worst fg% at the rim out of 31 players, while being 3rd in the NBA amongst Guards in rim FGA.

2004 amongst 32 Guards who averaged at least 3.5 FGA within 5FT, Mcgrady ranked 19th out 32 Guards in rim Fg%.

2005 amongst 34 Guards who averaged averaged at least 3.5 FGA, Mcgrady ranked 21st out 34 players in rim fg%.

Mcgrady wasn't good at a converting on the easiest most efficient shots on the at both the FT Line & at the rim.

"2003 Mcgrady" is more fantasy fiction than actual reality

I think average to slightly below average efficiency in high volume is not too bad (not too good either)

He probably had tougher than average looks at the rim due to his volume

[O_6]

‘03 T-Mac is my favorite player ever probably. I was a kid in middle school arguing T-Mac vs. Kobe. A lot of these people don’t understand how highly T-Mac was thought of at this time. He was absolutely considered on a certain level in ‘03. You had all these legends in their youth like Kobe/Duncan peak/Shaq prime/KG and yet the thought was T-Mac might actually be the best out of them possibly.

SGA going toe to toe with Jokic puts him on a pedestal. T-Mac was also on a pedestal.

KD is considered the “can’t guard him that well since he can rise over us” guy. Durant is broken that way. Wemby looks like he has the chance to be insane because off that. T-Mac was that guy as a SF/SG, he had a 7’ wingspan and jumped so high on his jumpers.

KD had the “I can make it over everyone” gene. T-Mac was by far the best at that in his era. Listen to these loser podcasters talk, they always mention T-Mac being able to rise and pull up over them in an unfair way

SGA this year is better though. T-Mac got hard shots easy because hard shots wasn’t a thing to him. SGA so easily gets easy mid-range looks that it’s wild to see him get 35 in his sleep. SGA gets a good shot whenever but unlike Mac, he does it with an insane speed/strength combo that Mac never had. T-Mac had a poor strength/quickness combo for what you would expect.

SGA gets a middle mid jumper good look easier than anyone I’ve seen.

McGrady was disgusting at his best. More athleticism and he’d probably do better against a nasty wing defender, but SGA being so precise and efficient makes him better. Especially if we’re including defense.

SGA gets such great shots off because of how great he is

[NBA4Lyfe]

Freedom of movement changed everything, its impossible to compare eras

[Outside]

Both peak TMac and current Shai are volume scorers who fill stat sheets. TMac feels like the more dangerous scorer, more likely to go nuclear, but here is a comparison between 2002-03 TMac and 2024-25 Shai.

TMac
1 -- 50-point games
11 -- 40+

Shai
4 -- 50+
12 - 40+

And that's with 13 games left in the season for Shai.

Efficiency is strikingly in Shai's column, and he likely has the advantage in defense, though that's more difficult to gauge. Shai gets to the line and is a far better FT shooter, but Shai is sometimes criticized as a foul hunter who won't get as many calls in the postseason.

The discussion has focused on the regular season. The postseason is obviously an area where TMac is criticized, both for his lack of team success as well as his performance in late series / closeout games.

Shai's grade is incomplete in that area. He had great stats in the 2023-24 PS (30.2 pts, 7.2 reb, 6.4 ast, 1.3 stl, 1.7 blk, 58.2 TS%), and that applied to the last two games vs Dallas:

Game 5 v Dal -- 30 pts, 6 reb, 8 ast, 60.9 TS%
Game 6 v Dal -- 36 pts, 3 reb, 8 ast, 64.1 TS%

Both were losses to close out the series for the Mavs. While he played well individually, OKC was the 1 seed in the Western Conference, and going out in the conference semis was definitely a disappointment. At least Shai has won a postseason series (4-0 vs NO last year), while TMac never won a series as a featured player. OTOH, TMac was never on a 1 seed and pretty much always had a tough first round opponent, not the 8-seed Pels Shai had last year.

Shai still has a chance this season to establish himself as capable of leading a team to PS success, but his grade is incomplete. Making the assessment today, he hasn't done that yet.

Overall, I chose Shai, based on his advantages in efficiency and on defense. I do think it's fair to point out that TMac never experience anywhere near the overall roster quality and depth that Shai has with OKC, and so besides the era differences, it can be argued that the roster differences also make it an apples-to-oranges comparison. But that's always the case to some extent. TMac had a great 2002-03 RS, but Shai this season is a marvel. I loved watching McGrady because of what he could do; I love watching Shai because of what he can do, but also how he makes that OKC team run.

[f4p]

Back in '02-03 it made sense to talk about what TMac could do with better teammates, but then we saw it and it was nothing special. Yes he had some injuries that reduced him from peak, but in general, TMac just wasn't a guy who had a really adept sense for how to make teams win, which was why he was never seriously seen as an MVP level guy in his own time.

To be fair, he had about three seasons where he was reasonably healthy, then a fourth in 03-04 where he was there as a total offensive player but had fallen off a lot as a scorer. That's the season where his back really started to get in the way.

So we never really got to see him fully healthy and clicking in his prime. He and Yao didn't have amazing chemistry, but they also had JVG coaching them, and he was not a coach noted for his offensive brilliance. Plus, both McGrady and Yao were unhealthy often, and Yao couldn't really support volume. They did immediately win 51 in their first season together, and won 52 a couple seasons later when McGrady was healthy again, then lost in 7 to a tough Jazz team with Deron Williams and Boozer... the latter of whom REAMED them out in Game 7. 55 wins despite lack of health a year later, lost to the same Jazz. Then 53 despite health issues... and lost in the second round to the title Lakers.

I don't know that it's fair to really look at McGrady and say that he didn't know how to make teams win. They won with him. Orlando was a disaster-class in roster construction, and the Rockets were unhealthy most of the time, and the West has been a murderer's row for a quarter century.

So this does flesh out his career a bit more talking about injury issues, which deserve to be mentioned.

However, it just has to be noted that he really wasn't more inefficient after the injuries compared to before.

If I just give his TS% from rookie season to age 25, I get:

.505
.504
.509
.521
.532
.564
.526
.526

There's nothing about those last two seasons that seems off compared to his norms. It's just that '02-03 when TMac was 23 was the outlier, and everyone just assumed he'd get better after that because that's the norm in basketball.

And why is it the norm? Not because haven't peaked physically by age 23 - because for everything other than brute strength, they have - but because top tier players tend to see their BBIQ really skyrocket after that age. So when a guy never does that, we shouldn't expect him to get better, and should expect him to peak at a young age.

And of course then we get into his post age 25 seasons where he's still jacking the ball at a similar rate for several years, as his TS% starts dropping below .500. Fine to say that injuries and other aging took their toll to drop him a bit, but simply put, if you're volume chucking post-prime, you're playing stupid basketball.

I'd say this sums up TMac well. People thought that because got a decent number of assists he must be a good playmaker, but really he was just an athlete who was allowed to play in a proto-helio fashion that he never should have been slotted into.

he absolutely was a good playmaker. it was one of the things that immediately impressed me after we traded for him.
how effortlessly he could set everyone up. he loved long 2's and seemed to love them even more in the playoffs, but he could playmake. the whole 22 game winning streak was broken down tmac just getting everyone the shots they needed, even as he himself could no longer generate efficient shots. and that was especially true as yao missed the last 10 or so games of that streak. that team had no business winning 22 in a row without tmac running everything.

Understandable that people at the time didn't realize how badly he'd stagnate when it looked like he was turning into an MVP candidate in '02-03, but knowing what we know now, almost all of his teams would have been better with him taking a more limited role.

mmm, not sure if that's true. his 2005 playoff series against the mavs was one of the most dominating you'll see. 30/7/7 and completely shutting down prime dirk nowitzki is a fairly unique level of dominance. it's just that we had no role players around him and yao. i think it was 2007 when we literally played a playoff game where 4 people scored a point. which had never happened in an nba game. if tmac took any more of a limited role, we might not have broken 50 that game. of course, we eventually got daryl morey and he somehow traded shoestrings and twigs for shane batter, ron artest, carl landry, luis scola, chuck hayes, dikembe mutombo, aaron brooks, and kyle lowry, the perfect cast to put around tmac and yao and then...they both got injured.

Re: They won 51, 52. Yup, and then they peaked in '08-09 when TMac's team finally won a playoff series...with him gone due to injury.

yeah, but we won because we went from luther head as like our 5th best player to those guys i mentioned above. while i resent the fact that tmac basically got surprise surgery in the middle of that season and basically made his own bed by bailing on the best team he was ever on, this definitely wasn't the 2005/6/7 rockets just suddenly winning because tmac wasn't holding them back.

That Rockets team was always one that looked like it had potential when injured, but then you saw them healthy and you realized that there was no ability to synergize. They could win more than 40 games without either TMac or Yao, but put it all together and they were a guaranteed 1st round exit.

again, very different teams. yao and tmac were moderately healthy when the role players sucked. they were injured/gone when we got a good GM and were stacked with role players.

however, i think even compared to 2003 tmac, who played with maybe the worst supporting cast to every make the playoffs, i think you have to take this year's SGA.

[One_and_Done]

Barring some kind of playoff collapse it's Shai. He runs your offense and gives you more on D.