The REAL REASON Why T-Mac Lost A 3-1 Playoff Lead

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In 2003 Tracy Mcgrady infamously said: "It feels good to get into the second round." with the series still not over. T-Mac prematurely thought that a 3-1 lead over the Pistons was pretty much a done deal. And this completely backfired on him as he played poorly, the Magic lost the next 3 games and got eliminated in the first round for the third straight year.
And while many blamed Mcgrady for his cockiness, I need to give you a different angle, and show you the real reason for this debacle.
You see, those Orlando Magic teams were supposed to be scary, with a 1-2 punch of T-Mac and Grant Hill, but we all know that Hill was constantly injured, which left Tracy all by himself.
I mean, he had teammates but check out these names.
The 34 year old high flier Darrel Armstrong. To this day the only guy who attempted a layup in the dunk contest.
A 33 year old Shawn Kemp, looking nothing like the Sonics reignman. After all the battles with drugs and alcohol, this would be the last season of his career.
And you tell me how much you know about Gordan Giricek, Pat Garity and Andrew DeClercq. These were important rotation players and even started a ton of games.
Rounding things off are Jacque Vaugn and a rookie Drew Gooden, who was actually the second best player in the Pistons series. But we’ll get to that in a bit.
That entire season Mcgrady posted monster numbers and finished as the leading scorer with 32 points per game, but the team didn’t really win.
Orlando snuck into the playoffs as the 8th seed and faced off against the 1 seeded Detroit Pistons.
A year before they became the champions, the Pistons were establishing themselves as contenders. But they were still some pieces away.
Detroit had Chauncey, Rip and Ben in the starting five, but then Corlis Williamson was the power forward before they got Rasheed, and since Tayshaun Prince was just a rookie this season, a guy named Michael Curry started at small forward.
Just a 3 point per game scorer, the stats suggest that Curry was a defensive player, but right out of the gates in game 1, it became clear that he can not hang with Mcgrady.
Just look at how easy everything is for T-Mac. Blowing right past Curry time after time. Or getting to his spot and raising up without even looking at the contest by his defender.
He did the same against Williamson and Cliff Robinson, who the Pistons also tried on him.
For that whole time, the rookie Prince was mostly watching from the bench, witnessing a 43 point explosion from Mcgrady. Little did he know that his time would come in this series.
BTW speaking of witnesses, this high schooler right here was in the first row eating chips and watching the game a few months before getting drafted.
Anyway, the Magic steal game 1 in Detroit and look at the contributions from the team.
You got guys in the starting lineup with 4 and 2 points in this game. In fact Orlando won despite having only 2 guys score in double digits. That’s insane.
If you thought that was bad, let me tell you that in game 2 which the Magic lost and scored only 77 points, T-Mac outscored the rest of his own teammates 46-31. Yeah he got 46 points and the other 11 guys who got in the game all scored 31 points total. And none of them got to double digits. This is the supporting cast that Tracy had.
They did play a lot better at home however, providing a terrific balance of scoring, with a lot of guys helping Mcgrady carry the offensive load.
Armstrong had 20 in game 3 and 18 in game 4, while Gooden had 15 and 7 in game 3, and a monster 20 and 13 in the 4th game.
As for T-Mac, with Curry, Williamson, and Jon Barry on him in the first 4 games he had an average of 36.2 points per game on 51.6% from the field and 40% from downtown which is absolutely unstoppable. This is exactly how the Magic got to a 3-1 lead, and things at least for Tracy seemed to be over.
As he was on the podium celebrating already, Rick Carlisle was changing his game plan and adding an unexpected player into the mix.
The rookie Tayshaun Prince who played a total of 11 minutes in Orlando’s 3 wins, now was tasked with saving the Pistons season and guarding Mcgrady man to man.
And albeit a desperate move, it worked. Prince made T-Mac work for every one of his points, so in game 5, Tracy shot just 8 for 20. A game that Orlando lost by 31.
Tayshaun also dropped 15 and 7 and was a game high +27 on the plus minus.
Prince went from not even playing in 2 of the first 4 games, to 24 minutes per game, a key piece on defense. And he did his job.
It was a similar story in game 6 as well, where Mcgrady did drop a lot of points, but needed a ton of shots to get there. 39% from the field weren’t going to cut it for the Magic, especially when he couldn’t get support from his teammates. I mean seriously, what type of shot is this?!
Giricek was the second scorer behind T-Mac and had just 12 points. The 15 point loss was more than understandable.