Despite the fact that most media outlets reported the Kevin Martin/Carl Landry trade as the “OMG…TMAC GOT TRADED” deal, I don’t think many people expect Tracy McGrady to be a marquee player in this league ever again. He is an old 31 30 and will probably still find ways to put the ball in the hoop over the next season or two, but I think it’s safe to say that he is now a superstar in name only.
TMac apologists/supporters like myself are mainly hoping that he can transform his game to focus less on iso moves and more on offensive facilitating, thereby emphasizing the theoretically still-capable abilities of his mind over the bygone-otherworldliness of his failing body. Perhaps he can have a Grant Hill-in-Phoenix type swan song somewhere, contributing to a good offense and occasionally flashing the brilliance that we once saw from him every few possessions in his prime.
I’m not here to write the guy’s eulogy eugoogly just yet, however.
I’m just here to point out that the Knicks will be Tracy’s fourth team, and whatever team he signs with this summer (presuming he doesn’t take the minimum-ish to stay in New York) will be his fifth franchise. That seems like a lot for a 7-time All-NBA player, 2-time scoring champ and future Hall-of-Famer — particularly when you consider that the guy was not just a scorer for hire, as illustrated by the 6 assists and 6 boards he dropped nightly.
Looking beyond McGrady, it also struck me that Dallas is the fourth team Caron Butler has played for. That seems like a lot for him, too. Aside from a few bad habits he has picked up over the past 18 months or so in DC, Tuff Juice seems like the exact type of player every team would want. You need points? He can score. Want some boards? He does that, too. How bout defense? He can do that for days — against twos, threes and even some fours. “But wait … I need play-making, ball-handling and someone to run plays through on the perimeter.” He got you.
Still, Caron is now, once again, on to the next one.
And what about Antawn Jamison? Why would anyone ever trade this guy? The consummate pro, all he does is get buckets in his sleep and post double-doubles on the reg. And, oh by the way, if you for some reason ask him to unjustly come of the bench for a whole season, the only way you will ever even know that he is mounting a quiet protest against your decision is by the Sixth Man of the Year trophy he’ll be holding at the end of the year.
Of course, there are logical, real-world reasons that these guys have bounced around. TMac chose to leave the Raptors, and the Grant Hill Turned Into a Corpse Era soured any hopes of a McGrady-on-the-Magic-for-life scenario. Caron was part of the heavy, yet-necessary, price it took Pat Riley to bring Shaq to South Beach, and he only ended up in DC due to a colossal blunder by Mitch Kupchak, who thought Kwame Brown could be molded into a legitimate NBA player for some reason. Antwan wound up on that really weird, “we’re not sure what we want to be” Mavs team that gave both Jamison and Antoine Walker an 82-game tryout before getting rid of both of them — and Steve Nash. And as we all know, Caron and Antwan’s stints in Washington were both decided by the way of the gun more so than anything either one of them did individually.
But long story short (OK … long story long), all this made me wonder whether or not it was actually weird for multiple-time All-Stars to play for at least four or five teams during their careers. I mean, Shaq is one of the best ever and the numbers in his zip code have fluctuated almost as much as the ones on his scale. And even though most of it happened before he “became Mr. Big Shot,” Chauncey Billups started out his career being passed around like an L at Qyntel Woods’ crib.
So rather than try to speculate if four teams (and perhaps five teams come this summer) is truly a lot for a player as good as TMac, I figured I would just run the numbers.
Here are all the players who have made the All-NBA First Team since 1990 ranked by how many teams they have played for.
Since CWebb’s “six teams” is really “five teams plus a couple forgettable games with Golden State in a last-ditch comeback attempt,” if TMac does end up not re-signing with the Knicks this summer, he will indeed become a “superstar journeyman” to a degree exceeding all his peers aside from Webber, Shaq and AI. And presuming his knees and back allow him to keep playing until he’s, say, 35 — and he has has the desire to do so — it’s not out of the question that he may end up playing for six or seven different teams.
That would be both unprecedented in the post-1990 NBA and a little sad. Sort of like the current Iverson fade-away into the night.
It should be noted, however, that Iverson’s Memphis stint was even shorter in length than CWebb’s second Dubs stretch — although they are obviously different in that one was an old man trying, and failing, to continue a career, whereas the AI in Memphis fiasco was … well, it was the AI in Memphis fiasco.
You can figure out on your own if you want to really factor that in when you think about whether or not AI qualifies as “superstar journey man” himself. On the one hand, he forced his way out on his own volition. But Memphis was also unwilling to accommodate his desire to be a major part of the team and, in effect, told him to take a hike if he wasn’t willing to be a role player.
And to me, that’s really the most interesting part of this whole discussion: How many times did an NBA team tell a very good player “we don’t want you”? That may be an overly callous way of terming it for some situations (for example, Caron and Lamar being shipped out of Miami), but regardless of the specifics on a case-by-case basis, if a team trades a guy or declines to re-sign them as a free agent, the franchise is ultimately telling the guy “we want someone else more” … or “we want to change directions” … or “it’s not you — it’s me.”
If we open this up to the players good enough to be All-NBA, but never good enough to be named to the 1st team, we have both more players to look at — and more movement.
Here are all the guys who “peaked” at 3rd Team All-NBA or 2nd Team All-NBA since 1990.
The guys above fall, roughly, into the group of “worse than Tracy but better than Antawn and Caron. Although that’s certainly debatable in a few cases. Chill out, Juwan Howard.** (UPDATE: Fun Fact: Juwan, a guy who has started 24 games at center for Portland this year, was 3rd Team All-NBA in 1996. What was I doing at the time? Listening to some record called Reasonable Doubt by a new artist named Jay-Z on my way to JV basketball games.) And I’ll probably take Antawn over Anthony Mason minus the fresh haircuts. (Side note: I’ve gotten my hair cut several times in the barber shop where Mase used to get his haircuts engravings done. I’m a Pacers fan so it wasn’t some pilgrimage; I just used to live a few blocks away from there in Jamaica, Queens, and tagged along to get a cut a few times with a friend who liked the barbers there. There’s NBA stuff all over the place. It’s pretty cool.)
Obviously, guys like Bird and Nique are a lot better, too, but the 1990 cut-off date means that we’re talking about some of these 1980s stars well past their prime. Perhaps we’ll take this all back even further another day.
Lastly, here are all the guys who have made an All-Star roster but never made an All-NBA team since 1990.
** (c) Trey Kerby
Congratulations, Otis Thorpe.
Since your 10-team career features no “layovers” (stints a player had on a team for 25 regular season games of less), you take the cake for the coveted title of “Biggest All-Star Journey Man of the Past 20 Years.” Take a bow.
And, yeah, after looking at all this, it’s pretty clear that TMac bouncing around the league to this degree is rather unusual for someone of his caliber, but Caron and Antwan really aren’t major outliers.
