During an interview with Complex, Tracy McGrady revealed that he was actually happy Michael Jordan killed the trade that would’ve brought him to the Chicago Bulls in exchange for Scottie Pippen. Though McGrady could’ve possibly won an NBA championship had it gone through, he says that he needed to go through certain things in his career. He also revealed his distaste for super teams and that he’s disappointed in Kevin Durant for joining the Golden State Warriors.
via Complex:
And speaking of the Warriors, obviously the biggest news of the offseason is is that Kevin Durant left to join them. What were your thoughts on that and more generally, what are your thoughts on players leaving their old teams to form superteams?
I was disappointed in the move to Golden State. I wasn’t disappointed that he left, I mean he’s a free agent, he’s able to go wherever he wants. But I just think having a team now coming off a championship run and you have the champs down 3-1, and they come back and defeat you. I just think as a competitor, you would come back and try to dethrone them with the same team.
You’re playing with a top-five point guard in Russell Westbrook. I mean to me, I think OKC is a championship-caliber team. They displayed that; they just had a major collapse in the Western Conference Finals against Golden State. But I was highly disappointed that he chose Golden State to go and play for the other team. I wanted him to stay in OKC.
Now do you think superteams are good or bad for the league?
They’re awful. I think it’s bad considering they tried to change things in the [collective bargaining agreement] to stop all of the superteams. And with the $93 million salary cap, you’re not going to be able to stop that. Teams have so much money to spend on players, it’s like AAU basketball nowadays in the league. Whereas when I was playing you had a superstar on the Orlando Magic. You had a superstar in Boston in Paul Pierce. You had a superstar in Philadelphia in Allen Iverson. You had a superstar in Toronto in Vince Carter. You had Ray Allen, a superstar in Milwaukee. That made it such a competitive league and the guys I was with, everybody didn’t team up. We were all trying to beat each other’s a**.
