Superstars’ demand for the ball render them unimportant, making a rough transition into post-prime abyss
If you’ve been paying attention to NBA All-Star voting, you might have noticed a bizarre trend.
Alongside mainstays like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, two legends on the outs are getting quite a bit of electoral attention from basketball fans.
Allen Iverson and Tracy McGrady are once-in-a-lifetime talents — one an undersized offensive psychopath who never met a man he couldn’t score on, the other a stat-sheet stuffer who once put up 13 points in 35 seconds.
There’s just one problem: A.I. and T-Mac are essentially washed up.
It doesn’t seem so long ago that Iverson, the consummate warrior, was at once baffling defenses and invigorating small-minded pundits who shout to anyone who’ll listen that the league is filled with thugs. Same for McGrady, who used to exasperate opposing coaches with his size, quickness and guile.
The fact that they’re getting All-Star votes can be easily explained — McGrady has a sizable Chinese fan base thanks to his gargantuan teammate, and Iverson connected with fans like no other player in the post-Jordan era. But what forced them out of the NBA kingdom and into the wilderness is a bit more nuanced.
Iverson came into the league as 5-feet, 11-inches of tattoos, topped with a decidedly defiant set of cornrows. In a league then looking for a marquee superstar, he positioned himself as the anti-Jordan: He didn’t care about marketing, sponsorships or the financial health of the NBA. He was unabashedly tied to the blighted culture that spawned him, and that endeared him to a whole generation of basketball fans.
McGrady’s emergence was less of a milestone for the NBA. He was a dangerous tweener — a hybrid between a shooting guard and small forward — who could score from anywhere on the court. However, the two shared the same sneering swagger, the same absurd scoring ability and the same unwillingness to pass the ball.
And then it all fell apart.
In 2008, Iverson was traded for Chauncey Billups — the Honda Civic to his Escalade — and McGrady’s Rockets grew weary (and suspicious) of his constant injuries and stuck him on Injured Reserve with all possible contempt.
Since then, Iverson has bounced from team to team and threatened retirement. The Rockets have essentially locked out a now-healthy McGrady and opted to rebuild the team around a bunch of role players.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
It was a dizzying trip from All-Star to afterthought for the two legends, and it had less to do with a decline in their skills than with a sea change in the NBA.
Immediately after Jordan’s retirement, the league was a superstar-driven organization: The path to absolution involved nabbing a transcendent player, surrounding him with complementary pieces and hoping for the best.
But the annual failures of Iverson’s Nuggets, McGrady’s Rockets and the pre-Pau Gasol Lakers began to change the minds of the powers that are in the NBA.
All of it came to a head with the 2007-08 Celtics, a squad of Super Friends who sacrificed their stats and spotlights in the interest of team chemistry and playoff success.
That experiment, of course, ended in a championship, and general managers league-wide took notice. Now, when looking at free agents, GMs focus as much on numbers as on attitude, composure and willingness to play second fiddle.
And thus, the Ballad of A.I. and T-Mac: They’re two men who must dominate the ball in order to win, but they’re trapped in a league where one-man teams get bounced out of the playoffs with hardly a sweat broken. They’re talented enough to reinvent themselves as role players on a contender, but, as Iverson found out last year, coming off the bench just doesn’t jibe with an alpha-dog pedigree.
In their place are postmodern superstars like James and Kevin Durant, players who value winning games as much as winning the respect of their teammates. Furthermore, the next generation of big-name ballplayers, like Kentucky’s John Wall, has grown up watching today’s chemistry-first rosters, meaning the era of the top-heavy team is likely never to return.
That leaves Iverson and McGrady — victims of the game’s evolution, all-or-nothing players whose success came at the expense of their teams.
History may leave them behind, but at least we’ll remember Iverson derisively stepping over Tyronn Lue in 2001 and McGrady pushing Spurs fans to the brink of insanity in 2004.
They may have been caustic and counterproductive, but they were amazing to watch.
