Welcome to LWOS Basketball department “NBA Time Traveler Series,” the column that imagines which retired player from an NBA franchise one would most want to travel back in time to see them play again in their prime. The LWOS Basketball department will review each of the 30 NBA franchises and which retired player would be their “NBA Time Traveler Player.”
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LWOS NBA TIME TRAVELER SERIES: ORLANDO MAGIC’S TRACY MCGRADY
In twenty six short years the Orlando Magic has seen a number of great players come and go.
From the group that led them to the 1995 Finals – Shaq, Penny Hardaway, Dennis Scott, Nick Anderson, Horace Grant et al – to Dwight Howard and beyond, the roster has featured a tonne of talent. But, in my humble opinion, the one player that would be worth travelling back in time for is Tracy McGrady.
TIME TRAVEL TO SEE TRACY MCGRADY PLAY FOR CHICAGO BULLS AGAIN
You’d have to go back to the 2002-03 season to see him at his best, as that year he averaged a career-high 32.1 PPG while shooting .457 from the field. These are Jordan-esque numbers from a man who spent four glorious seasons in Orlando after joining as a free agent in 2000.
TRACY MCGRADY’S TEAM ACCOMPLISHMENTS
I say glorious but in reality McGrady’s time in Orlando was anything but. Individually he was superb, but the experiment that was supposed to team him with Grant Hill and Tim Duncan failed miserably, with Hill playing just fourty seven games for the club and Duncan opting to re-sign with the Spurs.
Whilst this enabled McGrady to become the number one option, something he effectively left Toronto for, he found himself surrounded by role players, such as Mike Miller, Pat Garrity, Drew Gooden and Juwan Howard, for the most part, which drastically inhibited his chances of success. This is reflected in the fact that with him at the helm Orlando never won more than forty four games (2001-02) and never made it out of the first round of the playoffs, despite having led the Detroit Pistons 3-1 in 2003.
TRACY MCGRADY’S INDIVIDUAL ACCOLADES
During his time in Orlando, McGrady led the league in scoring twice (’03 & ’04), made four All-Star appearances, made the All-NBA Team twice (’02 & ’03), as he did the Second Team (’01 & ’04) and in 2001 he won the NBA’s Most Improved award. He also set a number of franchise records, the most impressive being the sixty two points he scored against the Washington Wizards in 2004, which is still the most scored in a single game by a Magic player.
That night he made 20-of-37 field goal attempts, including 5-of-13 from three and 17-of-26 from the three throw line. Had he shot a better percentage in any of those categories he might have gone on to become just the fifth player to score 70+ points in NBA history, at the time.
THREE GAMES THAT ONE MIGHT WANT TO TRAVEL BACK INTO TIME TO SEE MCGRADY PLAY:
McGrady liked playing against the Wizards, as in 2002 he notched fifty points for the first time in his career at the TD Waterhouse Centre, surpassing his previous career-high of fourty nine, scored against, you’ve guessed it, the Wizards in 2001. En-route to the big five oh he made 18-of-29 from the field and sealed the deal by knocking down a clutch jumper with 12.7 seconds left on the clock.
On the subject of closing out games, T-Mac’s first game winner came against Allen Iverson’s Philadelphia 76ers, the same 76ers who would go on to win the East that year, in 2001. With 2.7 seconds left, McGrady drove on Jumaine Jones before banking in a tough shot that tied his then career-high of 44 points.
Sadly, despite his individual brilliance and dunking prowess, we’ll most likely remember T-Mac as a purveyor of missed opportunity. While his career is littered with brilliant moments, like the night he scored thirteen points in thirty five seconds for the Houston Rockets, he’ll always be remembered as a player who failed to make it to the second round of the playoffs, one whose time in the league was ultimately marred by injury.
But, for Orlando Magic fans, he’s the player who plugged the gap between Shaq and Penny and Dwight and Jameer, someone whose hero-ball and highlight-reel material would definitely be worth skipping back a decade or so in order to go and see.
