Why Was Tracy McGrady Chosen?

Getting old sucks. It’s not about the way your hair changes colors and then starts to disappear. Losing your capabilities to participate in the things you love isn’t fun. Once you hit a certain state, the joys of life wilt, filtered away by disease, disappointment, family issues, money…more matter of fact, inevitably you hit that point in life where you realize the dreams you had never materialized, never moved from beneath your sleep and into real-life. That feeling sucks the strength right out of you.

Recently, I wrote about J.R. Smith and how his basketball sins may one day haunt him. At the very least, Smith will have a lot to regret once he gets older as all of the money and fame begins to wear away.

But Smith has never tasted success in the NBA like some others have. Smith has never made an All-Star team or won a major award. He will probably never miss what some others have forgotten because quite frankly, he never had it. He’s never been at the top of his profession. Tracy McGrady has. He was considered, by more than a few experts, to be the best player in the world for a few years. He was a new breed of athlete, a force the NBA wasn’t totally ready for at the time he reached the peak of his powers. And his list of  accomplishments has been well-documented.

But McGrady’s failure to extend his basketball life is both depressing and interesting. While his performance this season – four points per game in 16 minutes a game – has basically ended any hopes he, or any of his fans had, that he could revert to what once was, there are dozens of guys around the League who are prospering in the sunset of their careers.

Just a year ago, Kevin Garnett was hobbling through a frustrating season trying to come back from a knee injury. He had one foot out the proverbial door. Yet, as ESPNBoston’s Chris Forsberg pointed out, Garnett is grabbing defensive rebounds at a career-best rate of 31 percent this season on perhaps the best team in basketball. Then, there is Jason Kidd, putting up good enough numbers to rank in the top 10 last season in all of fantasy basketball. As his quickness has dissolved, Kidd’s strength and knowledge of his own body has improved while his jumper’s efficiency s skyrocketing. Steve Nash is still near the mountaintop as is Tim Duncan. And I’m not even going to mention Kobe Bryant.

But McGrady looks nothing like the player of five years ago, let alone a year or two ago. Gone are the commercials. The nights of tuning in to see Mac carry the Magic and the Rockets are forever etched in memory. We will never see him in another February showcase throwing alley-oops to himself. He’s in full-on survival stage: hanging onto this dream for as long as he can. That rope is frayed, and just as Allen Iverson probably played his final NBA minutes last season, TMac could be facing a similar outcome very soon.

His career will forever be epitomized by injuries. “What if?”

It never reached the heights we anticipated. For McGrady, how do you deal with that? On surface value, people will claim, “He made money and did what he loved for a long time. He’s set for the rest of his life.” But someone who has defined their life through one thing, defined who they were from their skills in one activity, will definitely have issues to deal with. Will McGrady see himself as a failure? Obviously he wasn’t in the grand sense. But, his career was darkened because of injuries and questions: “Does he play hard enough?”

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Childhood, and to a lesser extend our teenage years, are defined by opportunity and our willingness – or perhaps more appropriately, our naivety – to pursue whatever it is that we want to. There are hardly ever any engagements in the way, no strings attached. It’s just you and your life, connected together by the only things that matter.

As a person matures and struggles at first to find their place in society, our dreams take a backseat. The energy and ruthlessness of our culture forces everyone to live in the moment, to only acknowledge the present. Get to work today to make that $36.24 so you can go drop it into the bank so you can have the funds to pay your loans or take someone out for a nice dinner. The grind of sunrise to sunset numbs you. Your dreams will get lost. That’s pretty much a guarantee. I don’t think it’s impossible to live without regrets or accomplish everything you set out to. You will have visions and heart-to-hearts with yourself. Inevitably, you’ll start questioning yourself. Was what I did right? Should I have gone through with that? Did I really give it everything I had?

Sometimes, people need to just have faith. Faith that everything turns out for the better. Some say it is destiny.

Why was Tracy McGrady chosen? Or Gale Sayers or Ken Griffey Jr.?

On the one hand, it brings a smile to think about all of the guys still doing it well past their calculated prime. If not for the highlights, great competition and entertainment as well as the records they will surely break, at least it allows or fans to hold on to their childhood, or hold on to better times, or hold on to a dream or a past that represents something unique to them.

But still, that makes you feel for someone like Tracy McGrady, for in life sometimes you only get one real chance. And his time is up.