Tracy McGrady, who recently said he regretted parting ways with cousin and superstar Vince Carter, is the latest to chime in Kevin Durant moving to the Golden State Warriors.
McGrady is now an analyst on ESPN’s The Jump with Rachel Nichols, and gets to sit on the other side of the players table to watch league interactions from a different viewpoint.
He remembers the decisions he made in his career as a young player, and doesn’t quite understand Durant’s decision to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder, just as some others have voiced.
McGrady spoke with Complex Sports about Durant’s decision to join the Warriors.
I was disappointed in the move to Golden State. I wasn’t disappointed that he left, I mean he’s a free agent, he’s able to go wherever he wants. But I just think having a team now coming off a championship run and you have the champs down 3-1, and they come back and defeat you. I just think as a competitor, you would come back and try to dethrone them with the same team.
Durant departed from Oklahoma City after nine years standing, and made a decision to move along from a team with a player in top 5 ranking at his position, to a team with another player in the same position and ranked as high. Durant maintains it was more about team play than a singular player that went into his decision making, but McGrady still disagrees.
You’re playing with a top-five point guard in Russell Westbrook. I mean to me, I think OKC is a championship-caliber team. They displayed that; they just had a major collapse in the Western Conference Finals against Golden State. But I was highly disappointed that he chose Golden State to go and play for the other team. I wanted him to stay in OKC.
The league is changing and some are having a difficult time adjusting to the fact. During his time in the league, star players were more distributed around the league, and weren’t necessarily interested in playing together outside of exhibition or Olympic games.
They’re awful. I think it’s bad considering they tried to change things in the (collective bargaining agreement) to stop all of the superteams. And with the $93-million salary cap, you’re not going to be able to stop that. Teams have so much money to spend on players, it’s like AAU basketball nowadays in the league. Whereas when I was playing you had a superstar on the Orlando Magic. You had a superstar in Boston in Paul Pierce. You had a superstar in Philadelphia in Allen Iverson. You had a superstar in Toronto in Vince Carter. You had Ray Allen, a superstar in Milwaukee. That made it such a competitive league and the guys I was with, everybody didn’t team up. We were all trying to beat each other’s a**.
The reality is, McGrady and all others will have to get used to this new NBA. Multiple stars on one team will be the norm as long as teams can afford the players under the salary cap, and as long as free agency affords players the choice.
The NBA has tried to make it more attractive for players to stay on their original teams, but in the business of basketball, those things are not always black and white.
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