Eventually, Adelman returned to the locker room and retreated with McGrady into an adjacent coach’s office. McGrady slammed the door behind him, a witness said, and that marked the start of a tense, sometimes loud exchange that could be heard in the locker room, sources said.
In the discussion, McGrady challenged Adelman to tell him the coach’s plans and timetable for the seven-time All-Star’s eventual return to the roster, sources say. McGrady felt like Adelman had been uncommunicative with him for weeks, and no longer wanted to hear from Rockets general manager Daryl Morey or trainer Keith Jones about the team’s desire to make him wait until next week to take another MRI.
via McGrady unsure whether Rockets want him – NBA – Yahoo! Sports.
In Ballard’s book (which I swear upon everything holy I’m writing the review for this weekend, blocked out time and everything), there’s a ton of juicy stuff about McGrady. I won’t spoil it, but I will share this tidbit I followed up on my own about.
The Rockets excel because they play the smartest basketball you can. Blocks tapped to teammates. Hustle plays. Great defense, both man and help. And they shoot from high percentage areas. Namely, at the rim, in the paint, and three pointers.
Looking at McGrady’s numbers alone actually looks pretty good. For example, the dreaded 16-23 foot jumper range, he decreased every season since 2007 (as he should with age, and that’s impressive with his injury history), going from 8.6 per 40 to 5.5 attempts per 40 in 2008-2009 (granted with only a 35 game sample, but still). However, when you look at it from a team perspective, he was third most, behind 2.8 minute players Brian Cook and James “Flight” White. Compare that with speedy guard Aaron Brooks, who only took 2.0 16-23 foot jumpers a game. The assumption would be, yeah, but he probably shoots the highest percentage, right? Wrong. Scola was 45%, Brooks 40%, even Ron Artest beat him with 36%. So McGrady takes the lowest percentage shot most often of the heavy-minutes guys, and makes the lowest percentage of them.
If you’re Rick Adelman, would you be itching to get this guy back when you have a crew of devoted space monkeys itching to execute smart play after smart play for reasonable pay?
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