Free Ballin’

I should have seen this coming. ESPN’s Marc Stein reported this past weekend that a lot of NBA executives were talking about the possibility that Rockets star Tracy McGrady would be traded in the coming weeks. How utterly inane. It doesn’t take much investigation to see where this nonsense started. Stupid NBA trade rumors are so easy to trace. Typically, someone in the media voices a not so bright idea about how to improve one team and scalp another team and says, “Gee, doesn’t that make sense?”

Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune stepped up the plate a few weeks ago, stating that McGrady, “is said to have quietly let it be known he’s no longer happy in Houston,” which makes it sound like T-Mac slipped Sammy a note in math class. Seriously, Smith’s journalistic integrity is never more in question than when he’s writing or speaking. I saw Smith’s article linked on clutchfans.net, the popular Rockets fan-site, and thought, “This is just too stupid to go any further.” I was wrong, of course; stupid NBA rumors are never too stupid to be reported and re-reported and discussed ad nauseum.

Let me be clear, I have no insider information, none. I don’t know whether T-Mac is happy or not—I wouldn’t be happy if I had an injured knee. Sounds like it hurts, doesn’t it? Not only that, but it must be frustrating to miss games bullying some of the crappiest teams in the league, like the Knicks (twice) and Timberwolves, much less the challenge of going up against the NBA elite like Boston (still feels weird to write that) and Orlando. Say what you will about T-Mac’s teams’ lack of playoff success [something I will discuss soon]; he has shown the belly to rise to the challenge before, in spectacular fashion.

Certainly McGrady has to be frustrated about the Rockets underachieving this season—largely due to their foolish decision to fire Jeff Van Gundy, one of the best coaches in the league, whose masterful defense masked the deficiencies of a very thin, injury-riddled, team. All of the Rockets players have been openly frustrated by early season losses. However, being upset and wanting to be traded aren’t the same thing. Putting McGrady’s inner peace aside for a second, I can only infer from Daryl Morey’s brief tenure with the Rockets that the man isn’t an idiot. In fact, Morey seems quite competent, so T-Mac isn’t going anywhere, because only an idiot would trade McGrady, a player who probably has the less trade value relative to expected production than any player in the league.

McGrady has as much talent and can be as productive as any player in the NBA. Unlike other characters I’ve discussed McGrady has produced at an All-NBA level. He has also missed a considerable amount of time on the court in the last few years due to back spasms and stiffness. Not only did he miss games, but he has received a great deal of criticism for not being as aggressive as he was before the back problems, pulling up for jumpers when he is as capable as anyone in the game of getting to the rim for a dunk or lay-up—the highest percentage shots one can take. I don’t know of any statistical data to support this claim. Empirically, eh—he’s never driven the ball to the hoop as much as some of the other top penetrators in the league. For comparison’s sake, Dwyane Wade and LeBron take over 10 free-throws a game, to McGrady’s 7 per game with the Rockets. Is this a flaw? That’s another thing I’ll bring up real soon. Either way, however much Rockets fans would like to see T-Mac throw down a few more, he is still one of the most productive players in the NBA.

Without his history of back spasms, McGrady would be untradable in the traditional sense—being simply too good to be traded in any plausible scenario. It would take incomprehensible stupidity to move a healthy McGrady. Given his back ailments, though—not to mention his salary—he’s currently untradable in a somewhat different way: there’s no way a team would get anything close to market value for a player with his talents. Among the most fundemental axioms in the NBA is never trade a true superstar in his prime. Not only is it just antithetical to any team-building philosophy one might conjure—getting rid of one of the best players in the league—but teams who trade their stars never do so from a position of power.

A team has to be in serious trouble to even consider moving their superstar. That in itself is a dead giveaway that their GM was too incompetent to run the team in the first place. Giving an incompetent GM the task of moving a team’s most valuable asset when the team is in turmoil is insane, yet it happens. Therefore, given the implausibility of finding relatively good value for a healthy prime-of-career superstar, imagine how hard it would be to try and get value for a player with a history of back problems and an enormous salary. Stop imagining; it can’t be done. If the Rockets trade McGrady, they’ll be getting robbed.

It’s important to distinguish this type of situation from the one in which the New Jersey Nets currently find themselves. The Nets won’t be in a position to contend for quite some team and their best player, Jason Kidd, is entering his mid-30s. As such, Kidd’s value is decreasing at an increasingly rapid rate. For a team that has no immediate hopes of contention, it doesn’t make sense to hold onto such an expensive asset that’s providing diminishing returns. Tracy McGrady is still in his prime on a team with the personnel to have an outside shot at contention.

Discussing McGrady’s trade value doesn’t paint him in the most flattering light, but it would behoove Rockets fans to remember that there’s often a considerable difference between a player’s value on the basketball court and his value as an asset. This is certainly the case with McGrady. There are back problems and then there are Back Problems. McGrady’s most recent back treatments have helped him stay healthy and the court (umm, except for this knee business) and his first step seems as explosive as ever. As long as he can play enough for the Rockets to get to the playoffs and then be healthy for the playoffs, he’ll always have more value to the Rockets on the court rather than on the trading block. And it seems that the Rockets front-office personnel concur. Though McGrady’s intermittent injuries (and his almost annoying tendency to be honest and forthcoming about them) can make Houston fans anxious, he and Yao Ming are going to be the foundation of the Rockets for the foreseeable future—and that’s a good thing for Rockets fans, just ask anyone from New York City.