NBA Futures Update – Tracy McGrady Signs One-Year Deal With Detroit Pistons
by Tim Furious
f you thought that the Detroit Pistons were idiots for throwing $3.8 million at Ben Wallace for two years, then you haven’t seen anything yet. The fledgling lottery team has offered Tracy McGrady a $1.35 million deal for one-year. The crazy thing? He’s apparently signed it.
McGrady has spent this summer in limbo along with fellow superstars-no-longer, Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson. It was largely expected that McGrady would sign with the championship contending Chicago Bulls as a bench scorer, but his ego got in the way. He apparently believed that averaging 9.4 points per game over the course of 41 games with Houston and New York warranted a spot in the starting lineup.
John Paxson, the VP of basketball operations for the Chicago Bulls said that Tracy is “a good guy. But we just felt that given where we’re at, and the way we want to play, we do want to be more of an up-tempo team on the offensive end.” [credit: AP].
So now McGrady has signed a death warrant to play in Detroit because he couldn’t let his ego take a back seat. The NBA really is amazing. Would you rather sign to role play on a team with +1400 odds to win an NBA Championship, or a brutal roster that has +10000 odds to lift the trophy next June?
Chicago is on the rise and nobody is ignoring that. They’ll be competitive because they have two core players in Noah and Rose with a banger like Boozer to bolster both ends of the floor. Comparatively, what the hell is the plan in Detroit?
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Detroit is burning its money, and not just because this is one of the most down trodden major cities in the country right now. The team is already paying Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva between $17 million to $20 million for the next three NBA betting seasons. On top of that they have Richard Hamilton on contract for $12.6 million for those same three years.
McGrady will have to battle Tayshaun Prince for the starting role. Prince has averaged just 12.7 points per game and lost everything that made him a magical defender when he was stripped to the birthday suit by LeBron James during the playoffs back in 2005. Even still, Prince is 30-years old and missed his first games of any NBA season last year when he lasted just 49-games. Up until that point he’d played full seasons since 2003.
There was a time when the idea of Wallace, McGrady, Hamilton and Prince playing together would cause shivers in the league. Now, that foursome is a walking pile of one-liners and jokes. We used to write headlines like “The Pistons Firing On All Cylinders” but now there’s just one we can write.
The Pistons look damn rusty.
Bet on NBA Rookie of the Year Futures where Detroit Pistons first-rounder Greg Monroe is slated as a +1000 underdog!
