I listened to a podcast of Tracy McGrady‘s interview on Houston’s 790AM sports station on Tuesday. It appeared that McGrady was obligated to make the call to promote his deal with Yahoo! Fantasy sports, not to come on and say he’s pissed about what’s happening with the team, and what he’s going to do about it.

Remember last year how McGrady said “It’s on me,” during last season’s playoff series against the Jazz, and how he has always referred to his teammates as his “supporting cast?”

Well, now that times are tough for the Rockets, it looks like McGrady thinks Yao is The Man and the “franchise player” instead of him. Here’s what he said when asked about his reaction to Yao’s comments that the Rockets were soft.

“My first reaction was….Finally. Yes! Yes, Yao. That’s what he has to do. Vocally. Express yourself. Let us know how you feel. Don’t hold it inside…that’s just showin’ signs of leadership. What he says is true. It’s showing up on the basketball court. I’d rather for him to come out and say it than me. He’s more of a franchise player than I am.”

I can’t believe the interviewer didn’t dig deeper and question him if he really believes Yao is the franchise player. Instead, after that last statement, the interviewer immediately comments (and basically interrupts him before McGrady has a chance to explain), “We (the audience) know better than that,” and bails McGrady out by moving on quickly to a softball question like, “It’s gotta help that the big man in the middle is saying it, right?” Instead, I would have loved to hear him ask, “When did Yao become the franchise player?” or “What’s your role in calling people out?” or just let him continue talking. Sometimes the best interviews are when the interviewer just lets the interviewee talk.

If I had been McGrady, the right kind of answer would have immediately been something like, “I agree with Yao. We’re the leaders of this team, and we ARE playing soft. I said some things after last night’s game, too, about how we’re discombobulated on offense and some other things. But Yao and me have got to do more as leaders and be more vocal during games and improve our level of play as well as our teammates’ level of play. It’s our team, and we’re expected to be the leaders.”

If you want to listen to it yourself, do a right-click on this link, then do a “save as” to your computer, then open the file and go to the 33:50 mark to hear the interview.

Another thing: here we are in the midst of this season of grand expectations cratering before our very eyes, and throughout the interview McGrady seems so relaxed and laughs about other things occurring off the court.

I remember listening to radio interviews that Kobe Bryant gave during the off-season, and how frustrated he was the Lakers’ front office wasn’t doing anything to acquire players that could help them win. You could just hear in his voice how it was tearing him apart that the Lakers weren’t committed to winning. Can we get some intensity like that, please? I loved how Charles Barkley was always pissed when his team was losing, even on days when they weren’t playing.

To make matters worse, the interviewers in this podcast seem to be fawning over McGrady by saying things like, “He gets it.” C’mon! If he got it, he would say he’s a leader, and that he’s mad as hell about what’s happening, and he’s going to work like hell to try to fix it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 1:08 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.