When Orlando acquired Vince Carter this summer, memories began to flood the mind. The memory of Vince's time as a Raptor and the amazing things he did there. The ugly exit from Toronto and the (mis)conceptions that were born out of that divorce.
While many criticized the trade it became clear that Carter represented something the Magic have not had in a very long time.
I am, of course, talking about his cousin -- former Magic All Star Tracy McGrady. He went through a similar messy breakup from the team in Orlando, but no one could deny McGrady was one of the best scorers in the league in his time with the Magic.
Now that Orlando is competing for titles again, I thought back to those formative years when McGrady graced a Magic uniform. Where does that era stand in Magic history?
It certainly was a frustrating one. Unlike the title promises of today, the team refused to go into the luxury tax to surround McGrady with the talent he needed to succeed. Grant Hill's contract was certainly an albatross around John Gabriel's neck for much of that period.
Surrounding McGrady with the likes of Mike Miller, Drew Gooden and Juwan Howard clearly could not cut it and who knows what would have happened had Hill been able to play at anywhere near 75 percent of what he was.
In case we have forgotten -- or blocked out of our minds -- McGrady 28.1 points per game in an Orlando uniform including an astounding 32.1 per game in the 2003 season. He led Orlando to the postseason in every year but one (the infamous 21-61 year) despite pretty much holding to a .500 record every year.
It was perhaps some of the greatest individual seasons of basketball in recent league history. It was certainly the most impressive individual seasons in Magic history perhaps. The fact he was pouring in all these points and single-handedly carrying Orlando to the postseason every year was an impressive feat that not even Shaquille O'Neal or Dwight Howard could do in Orlando.
In the end, though, the McGrady era is going to be forgotten in Magic history as some Dark Age in Orlando basketball. That "horrible" time between the 1995 Penny/Shaq era and the Dwight Howard era. He is and and always will be the in between -- his accomplishments seen as impressive but ultimately disappointing.
The T-Mac era will always be viewed as a failure.
It certainly can be seen that way as Orlando continued to fail to escape the first round of the Playoffs and escape mediocrity. I remember Mike Bianchi of The Orlando Sentinel arguing at the time that Orlando had to either be completely abysmal (which they would be in 2004) or put all their chips in and go for a title. Mediocrity, in other words, would not matter.
As the 2004-06 seasons and the three-year playoff absence proved to Magic fans everywhere, just being in the postseason could make a successful season. Some postseason is better than no postseason at all.
The McGrady era will be viewed as a failure for what the Magic got for him. Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley and Kelvin Cato had their moments in Orlando. But Mobley was traded to Sacramento in half a season. Francis became listless and useless -- a shell of the former All Star he was. Cato was sent off to Detroit for Darko Milicic and Francis was cleared for cap room.
Nothing says bridge era more than getting nothing in return for your transcendent superstar.
Who knows what would have happened if McGrady put his chips behind Howard in the 2004 Draft instead of Emeka Okafor. Would the Magic have had that inside-outside scoring combination that they have been hoping for since signing Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis.
His injury issues have certainly muddled the what-if questions McGrady's trade asked us.
But with a scoring force like Vince Carter on the roster, it is going to become easier to bury the McGrady past. It deserves some appreciation for its beauty even as we learn to forget it with the team's success the past couple seasons and the expectations of a title in the near future.
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