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Better Player

03 Tmac is the best player I ever saw with my own eyes.

This one is easy. Such a shame Orlando wasted Prime Tmac. Dude was playing with some bums.

Mac is more naturally gifted but SGA is undoubtedly the better all around player.

JustBuzzin wrote:03 Tmac is the best player I ever saw with my own eyes.

This one is easy. Such a shame Orlando wasted Prime Tmac. Dude was playing with some bums.

Right. I think it would have been a fun night to watch Peak T-Mac V KG that year. Especially in a 7 game series.

OkcSinceSGA wrote:Mac is more naturally gifted but SGA is undoubtedly the better all around player.

Do you think he fits in the D-Wade, Kobe, Dirk, KD Tier?

mdonnelly1989 wrote:

OkcSinceSGA wrote:Mac is more naturally gifted but SGA is undoubtedly the better all around player.

Do you think he fits in the D-Wade, Kobe, Dirk, KD Tier?

I mean I never feel comfortable placing people there after only 2-3 years at a level BUT… if we are talking couple year peak? SGA is arguably the highest with 2024+2025. But multiple ring winners like Wade, Kobe, KD.. I wanna see SGA add some hardware.

I picked SGA because I think he's the better defender, but this was really hard for me. Prime TMac is one of the most fun players to watch in NBA history. The man was capable of just taking over a game and beating pretty much anyone single handedly at any time. It's so strange to think he's only 45. 5 years older than LeBron and he stopped playing 13 years ago.

Yoshun wrote:I picked SGA because I think he's the better defender, but this was really hard for me. Prime TMac is one of the most fun players to watch in NBA history. The man was capable of just taking over a game and beating pretty much anyone single handedly at any time. It's so strange to think he's only 45. 5 years older than LeBron and he stopped playing 13 years ago.

I'm on this train.

For a single season, McGrady was amazing (obviously great in a bunch of other years too, but not like that). He was in shape, he was hitting 3s like no other point in his career, strong year at the line. Good all around game. Nasty isolation skills. Basically all the stats propping up his offensive dominance. Gets burned by many because he went down to those Pistons (who won the title the following year), but he had NOOOOOOTHING on that Magic squad. Like, they literally started Drew Gooden, Gordan Giricek, Jacque Vaughn and Andrew DeClerq in that series alongside McGrady. SHAWN KEMP played 10 mpg in the playoffs, and spent the rest of the time floating above the stadium as the Goodyear blimp. It was ugly.

I'm taking SGA because he is a better shooter and a better defender, but for a single season, it isn't a trivial debate.

tsherkin wrote:

Yoshun wrote:I picked SGA because I think he's the better defender, but this was really hard for me. Prime TMac is one of the most fun players to watch in NBA history. The man was capable of just taking over a game and beating pretty much anyone single handedly at any time. It's so strange to think he's only 45. 5 years older than LeBron and he stopped playing 13 years ago.

I'm on this train.

For a single season, McGrady was amazing (obviously great in a bunch of other years too, but not like that). He was in shape, he was hitting 3s like no other point in his career, strong year at the line. Good all around game. Nasty isolation skills. Basically all the stats propping up his offensive dominance. Gets burned by many because he went down to those Pistons (who won the title the following year), but he had NOOOOOOTHING on that Magic squad. Like, they literally started Drew Gooden, Gordan Giricek, Jacque Vaughn and Andrew DeClerq in that series alongside McGrady. SHAWN KEMP played 10 mpg in the playoffs, and spent the rest of the time floating above the stadium as the Goodyear blimp. It was ugly.

I'm taking SGA because he is a better shooter and a better defender, but for a single season, it isn't a trivial debate.

He had a 40+ point triple double against my Nets that year I'm still in awe of. We couldn't stop him.

Still though, it makes you appreciate just how damn good SGA is playing. It's rare to have a guy who does basically everything extremely well. He's very good to elite at pretty much every aspect of basketball.

Yoshun wrote:He had a 40+ point triple double against my Nets that year I'm still in awe of. We couldn't stop him.

He was wild-as, man. When that 3 was falling for him, he was super dangerous. It was a big part of why he was able to score despite how useless his team was, and how poorly-spaced they were. But he also had a fairly flat shot, and when his back issues started to take his legs out of his shot, then his J started to decline pretty quickly.

Still though, it makes me appreciate just how damn good SGA is playing. It's rare to have a guy who does basically everything extremely well. He's very good to elite at pretty much every aspect of basketball.

Shai is definitely going bonkers.

tsherkin wrote:

Yoshun wrote:He had a 40+ point triple double against my Nets that year I'm still in awe of. We couldn't stop him.

He was wild-as, man. When that 3 was falling for him, he was super dangerous. It was a big part of why he was able to score despite how useless his team was, and how poorly-spaced they were. But he also had a fairly flat shot, and when his back issues started to take his legs out of his shot, then his J started to decline pretty quickly.

Still though, it makes me appreciate just how damn good SGA is playing. It's rare to have a guy who does basically everything extremely well. He's very good to elite at pretty much every aspect of basketball.

Shai is definitely going bonkers.

I suppose if you're in the MVP discussion with a player elite as Jokic then you must at least be no more less than 1 tier below and a lot of people have Jokic as a top 5-10 talent of all time at this point. So Shai at minimum should be a top 10-20 talent ATM does that sound right?

mdonnelly1989 wrote:I suppose if you're in the MVP discussion with a player elite as Jokic then you must at least be no more less than 1 tier below and a lot of people have Jokic as a top 5-10 talent of all time at this point. So Shai at minimum should be a top 10-20 talent ATM does that sound right?

I mean, he's having a wonderful season. I don't know that I'd be hasty getting into ATG ranking territory at the moment. But he's certainly playing like that level of guy atm, sure.

I have to say: Seems to me like Shai looks better by literally any stat I can find, including the relative stats which cover literally any argument about "it was tougher back then".

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.

Doctor MJ wrote: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.

Doctor MJ wrote:I have to say: Seems to me like Shai looks better by literally any stat I can find, including the relative stats which cover literally any argument about "it was tougher back then".

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.

I come close to this one - despite amazing stats profile, I don't see Tmac as true all-time peak and Shai is getting close to that level. McGrady had one insane season but he never replicated it, or even came close to it. I am always very sceptical of one season wonders like this one, especially with Tmac who doesn't seem to have the best BBIQ out there.

70sFan wrote:I come close to this one - despite amazing stats profile, I don't see Tmac as true all-time peak and Shai is getting close to that level. McGrady had one insane season but he never replicated it, or even came close to it. I am always very sceptical of one season wonders like this one, especially with Tmac who doesn't seem to have the best BBIQ out there.

It would have been interesting to see a few more healthy seasons with reasonable support, and maybe a coach who knew how to use him. He definitely wasn't a Jokic in terms of his basketball IQ, and it's hard to tell if his shooting that year was an outlier or if he couldn't get back to it because he couldn't get his legs back into his shot, for sure.

tsherkin wrote:

Doctor MJ wrote: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. 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.

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.

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.

Can you blame the coach? To some degree, but the reality is that TMac played a role that assumed it made sense for him to a) volume shoot and b) be the primary decision maker. The former really never made sense post '02-03, and the latter only made sense when he was at his peak as a scorer.

By contrast, while OKC's coaching now deserves a lot of credit, Shai does his thing by constantly outsmarting those trying to cover him, making good passing decisions, and ramping up that shooting ability way beyond what TMac was ever able to do reliably.

Really the two guys shouldn't even get compared. The closest would be to say "Well if TMac had SGA's brain...", but he didn't and he was never going to.

Just like my vote against peak KD, give me Shai. It's weird to say of an MVP front runner but he's sort of underrated by the general public IMO (or maybe just RealGM?)

Doctor MJ wrote: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.

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 on a serious title contender in a way McGrady never was.