取材自http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/ TPStory/LAC/20041104/RAPTORSIDE04E/TPSports/Basketball 是没打赢国王前的一篇报导 有空再翻 Emboldened McGrady seeks to fire up his career By MICHAEL GRANGE The new Tracy McGrady was on display early last night. The braces are long gone, the nervous 18-year-old who warmed Darrell Walker's doghouse as a Toronto Raptors rookie is history, too. In his place is an eight-year National Basketball Association veteran at age 25 who is on his third team and trying to erase a reputation as a me-firster who can rack up numbers but has yet to help his team win a playoff series. He seems serious about it, too, if the way the Houston Rockets' new star got in the face of teammate Yao Ming before the opening tip was any indication. Lip-reading suggests the gist of the message was that the 7-foot-6, 310-pound Yao should take the ball and dunk on wispy Raptors centre Loren Woods, give or take a few choice adjectives. If the formerly laid-back T-Mac seems to have developed an edge, it's because he has. "I just want to rejuvenate my career. It's a new beginning for me," McGrady said before taking the court against his former team at the Air Canada Centre, where he was greeted with a chorus of boos almost every time he touched the ball. "I just want to put [what happened in Orlando] behind me and move on. I'm looking forward to being successful this year, and also going deep in the playoffs." It was his lack of edge, his seeming unwillingness to shoulder more than his share of the load, that helped grease his way out of Orlando in a multiplayer summer blockbuster that landed him in Houston. "It would be fair to say it was a mutual decision," Magic general manager John Weisbrod was quoted as saying recently. "I would be lying to say I was anxious to have Tracy back. "Basketball is a team game and he had developed an attitude of the organization eating out of his hand. It was tough to imagine that, no matter what pieces we changed around him, that we were going to be able to change the culture of this team with him on the team." It's a criticism that McGrady took personally. "They go and say that John Sissybrod, or whatever his name is, says T-Mac is not his kind of player," McGrady said in a recent Slam Magazine article. "What kind of [stuff] is that? . . . This whole thing is a joke." Having arrived in Houston armed with a contract extension and a partnership with Yao, the reigning NBA scoring champion is charged with nothing less than contending for a title. He also has to erase the idea that no superstar would allow his team to lose 18 successive games, which is how the Magic started last season, ending their playoff hopes Dec. 1. "With the pieces that I have [in Houston], the coaches that I have, it's really all up to us," he said before the game last night. "But just because it's T-Mac and Yao, everyone expects good things to happen, but in this league it doesn't really happen that way. It's not going to be easy." As always, he made it look easy against the Raptors, as he does against everyone in the NBA. That may well be McGrady's biggest obstacle. With his length, explosiveness and skill, the 6-foot-8 forward never seems to look ruffled, whether he's finding a loose ball for a put-back dunk, or blowing by distant cousin Vince Carter on his way to the rim. But making it look easy is no longer enough for McGrady. In his Rockets' debut on Tuesday, he shot only 6-of-18 and had only three points by halftime. He did little to get Yao into the game either; his big sidekick scored only seven points in the Rockets' 87-79 loss to the Detroit Pistons. "I'm not going to judge him game to game," Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy said. "Everyone wants me to take his temperature every day. I'm not going to do it. . . . It's unfair to him and unfair to our team to reduce it to one person. "Let's let him get through two games before we make definitive statements on the validity of his career and the trade." --

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