Runnin’ Smack With T-Mac

There’s a sense of relief by the time you pull up to the winged “1” that sits square in the middle of the gate outside Tracy McGrady’s deluxe Orlando, Fla., home, complete with a basketball court in the front yard and jet skis emblazoned with Orlando Magic logos in the lake out back.

McGrady has been bobbing and weaving through traffic in his plush white Bentley -- his “cruising car,” he says -- and you can’t help but worry that you will lose him among the cars on Interstate Highway 4. But then you remember that there probably aren’t that many Bentleys mixed into central Florida traffic. And when you watch McGrady pull the Bentley into his garage, where a slumbering silver Ferarri sits, well, you realize things could have been worse.

“You kept up,” McGrady says in mock surprise. He smiles. “I thought I might lose you out there.”

Hmm. If you’re not mistaken, McGrady is talking a little smack to you and your rental car. It’s a Chevy Malibu, so there is no effective rebuttal. When McGrady sees you’re wearing jeans on a 90-degree September day in Orlando, he can’t help but say, “You must be enjoying this weather. I would not even call this hot. It could be a lot hotter.” Wait, did he just trash-talk the sun?

This is Tracy McGrady, NBA superstar and proud talker of trash. McGrady simply likes talking. He would just as readily trash-talk your lame set of wheels while standing in his driveway as he would trash-talk some lame effort to guard him on the court. McGrady trash-talks during games, in the locker room and in the media. You get the feeling that on garbage collection day, he waits by the curb to trash-talk the trash collectors. “Hey, I don’t mind mixing it up with anyone who wants to,” McGrady says. “As long as they take it the right way. I’m not out to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

There’s the rub for McGrady: Folks don’t take it the right way, and he winds up portrayed as a self-centered blowhard. As McGrady sees it, there has been a decline in the rivalry-building ragging that fueled NBA showdowns during his childhood. There still is plenty of junk being jawed in the NBA, but many players are restrained by the threat of technicals, fines and public opinion. McGrady finds this lamentable and aims to change it.

“I don’t know when people got so sensitive,” McGrady says. “Muhammad Ali would never be able to talk the way he did today. If I say I am one of the top five players in the league, people say, ‘Why did he say that? Why is he talking about himself?’ It does not matter if it’s true.”

Just 5 1/2 months ago, as the Magic’s season was ending thanks to a first-round playoffs loss to the Hornets, McGrady took a public flogging for stating that he was the best player in the series. He said that if Hornet star Baron Davis put up better numbers, it was because he had better players around him. McGrady’s point about truth in trash-talk seems valid -- among the floggings, few stopped to ask whether what McGrady said was true. Few considered that there isn’t a general manager in his right mind who would swap McGrady for Davis. Few asked whether the well-stocked Hornets really were better off than the Magic, who have not been able to surround McGrady with much talent, thanks to Grant Hill’s recurring foot injury.

McGrady just shrugs. “Clearly, he had a lot more depth than we did,” he says. “That’s what I was dealt. I was not putting down my teammates. I love my teammates. It was just reality. Look at what Baron Davis has on his team. He’s got guys who can rebound, who can score and who play defense like (crazy). People said I was disrespecting my team. That’s not it.”

That sort of criticism, McGrady says, does not bother him. He is not going to clip his lips simply because some people don’t like what he has to say. He thinks he could average a triple-double someday. Ask him who he’d pick first if he were building a team from scratch, and he won’t hesitate: “Me.” Who does the best job of guarding him? “Ain’t no one,” he says. “No one who can do it every night.”

McGrady is 23, still two years away from his prime by his reckoning, and probably the NBA’s most gifted player. Certainly, no player will be called upon to carry a bigger load for his team, and if you’re forecasting the MVP race, that makes McGrady the top candidate. He followed a breakthrough year in 2000-01 (26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.6 assists), with a big ‘01-02 (24.8 points, 7.9 rebounds and 5.3 assists). He can score from the perimeter and the post, frequently defends the opponent’s top player, passes like a point guard and rebounds like a power forward. Shouldn’t he be given some trash-talking latitude?

“With his skills,” says Buck guard Sam Cassell, “Tracy has the right to talk all he wants. He can back it up.”

Cassell would know, because it was against the Bucks in the opening round of the 2001 postseason that McGrady first began carving out his identity. He still smiles when recalling that series, in which he averaged 33.8 points, 8.3 assists and 6.5 rebounds in a four-game defeat.

What stood out even more than McGrady’s play was the force of his personality. He talked trash like Oscar the Grouch, barking in the ear of Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson -- “You’re gonna be locked down all night” was among the few lines he used that are suitable for print. Indeed, McGrady held Robinson to 14.6 points per game, 7.4 below his average. He labeled Robinson “the Big Puppy.”

“That,” McGrady says, “was fun as hell. Brings a smile to my face just thinking about it.”

That’s all McGrady says he wants to do -- bring a little fun to the game, especially in the playoffs. The Bucks and the Magic had a simmering rivalry, with an ongoing feud between coaches George Karl and Doc Rivers adding intrigue. Why not give the rivalry a little boost by adding a McGrady-Robinson subplot?

“There should be more of that,” McGrady says. “In the playoffs, it’s a different game. I am going to be in your ear. You want to talk smack to people and see if they bring their A-game. You want to do some talking because it forces you to bring out your own A-game.

“Look back to when Michael Jordan played Magic (Johnson) or Jordan faced the Pistons, or Celtics-Lakers. You think Magic was just quiet out there? Larry Bird would be out there telling people what he was going to do, then he’d do it. You think the Pistons weren’t talking

“You are sitting there watching, wondering what is going to happen next -- a fight, maybe, or somebody making a big shot to shut somebody else up. You read quotes in the paper and say, ‘Can you believe he said that about this guy?’ People are a lot more willing to watch those kinds of games. Then they want to watch the next game to see what happens next, what the next chapter in the story is.

“That’s what I try to bring back. Talking trash, having two teams that hate each other, having a rivalry. What’s wrong with two teams hating each other? I just wanted to start something up. I just wish other teams and players did more of that.”

McGrady says it is not really decorum and civility that keeps many players from getting into free-flowing talking battles. Rather, it is the fear of embarrassment, the fear of landing on television in an unfavorable light.

“There is really not that much trash-talking in the league,” McGrady says. “I think a lot of guys are scared to talk noise because you’re putting yourself on the line when you do. A lot of guys don’t want to get into it, because they know you will bust their butts, and there is nothing they can do about it. Then you’re gonna hear it from the fans, from the press, but worst of all, you’re gonna hear it from me.”

McGrady is sitting, resting his elbows against the gray marble of his kitchen table, contemplating used-up defenders from his past in the way that Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias recall all the girls they’ve loved before. For a 6-foot-8 player with McGrady’s level of skill, versatility and swagger, what often gets lost is how smart a player he is. A defender might give him trouble on a particular night, but a bit of film study and a consultation with coaches usually provide a remedy.

Last season, McGrady struggled in a game against the Raptors because of the way hefty 6-9 forward Jerome Williams was guarding him -- Williams was tight on him, putting his arm in McGrady’s back as soon as McGrady got the ball, and setting his feet soon thereafter. Usually against someone Williams’ size, McGrady penetrates and blows by him, but Williams was getting position too quickly.

“Next time, I did not let him get his feet set,” McGrady says. “As soon as I got the ball, I acted, I moved. That’s the kind of thing you have to do.”

In the playoffs, against the Hornets, McGrady was having a tough time with 6-1 guard David Wesley. McGrady had a serious size advantage, so he was trying to post up Wesley and shoot over him. But in the first game of the series, Wesley was giving McGrady slight bumps as he went up for shots, and it caused McGrady to misfire -- he was 8-for-21 from the field in that game.

“Second game, after I watched the film, I faced him up,” McGrady says. “It was over from there.”

As McGrady has sharpened his tongue, he also has sharpened his mental approach to the game. He can rattle off the way defenders play him with ease and knows the best way to attack.

“You never want to do the same thing twice with him,” says Bull forward Jalen Rose. “He will figure you out pretty quickly, and he has the tools to expose you if he does.”

Still, the one tool McGrady says he must work on is leadership. McGrady accepts responsibility for the two early postseason exits in his two years in Orlando. The series two seasons ago against the Bucks was fun, but the first-round loss to the Hornets last spring stung. “Depressing,” he says. “I failed.” McGrady moped for much of the summer, doing rehab to help his back, which he admits is not 100 percent. He traveled, mostly to get out of Orlando -- zipping off to Los Angeles, Hawaii and Cancun, keeping his mind off basketball.

“You can tell he is a guy who plays with hunger,” says new Hornet guard Courtney Alexander. “He is not a good loser. This guy works his tail off, and he does not care about his stats. He’s been around long enough now to know that does not matter. He’s hungry to win, and I think if he keeps that, it could be scary in a couple of years.”

After spending one postseason as a trash-talking, first-round novelty with impressive numbers, McGrady believed he should have carried the Magic further in the playoffs last year. Indeed, the Magic had a lead in the fourth quarter in three of the games against the Hornets, including Game 1, when the Hornets closed out the game thanks to a steal in the waning seconds by Davis, who slapped the ball from McGrady’s hands.

“That’s the next step for him,” says one Eastern Conference scout. “He has got to carry the team into the second round and forget about them not having a frontcourt, forget about whether Grant Hill is healthy. This is a huge year for Tracy McGrady. He can win games by himself. The Magic should get to the second round, no matter what, because of him.”

If he does, you better believe he is going to get there with his tongue wagging.

“We’re going further this year,” McGrady says. “And when we do, I am going to have a whole new set of talk ready to go.”

And, just to get in one last bit of ribbing, McGrady smiles and adds, “Bring your tape recorder.”