Committee Chairman
Tracy McGrady retires from the NBA
And just like that, we have another major retirement in the NBA that received little fanfare. Tracy McGrady has announced that he is officially done with playing in the National Basketball Association. “T-Mac” leaves behind what many consider to be a cluttered legacy, as he is a two time scoring champion, but his critics constantly point to his inability to lead his team past the first round of the NBA playoffs (and no, last year with the Spurs doesn’t count).
Statistically, McGrady has the credentials. Not only is he a two time scoring champion as earlier mentioned, he eclipsed the 24 points per game mark seven years in a row, was named a First Team All Star twice, a Second Team All Star three times and again a Third Team All Star twice; accolades which in our eyes is a true telling of where a Basketball player ranks among his peers. In advanced metrics, McGrady also had the highest PER in 2003, and retires from the NBA with a career PER of 22.1, a number that ranks him 28th all time.
Playoff failures aside, Tracy McGrady is a Hall of Fame calibre player, and barring any continued play in overseas professional leagues, he will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2019. He will probably get in, but will they make him wait?
Allen Iverson set to retire
The answer is, with a whimper. That is the Jeopardy question to “How did Allen Iverson retire, which a decade ago seemed impossible. It was reported that Iverson was going to announce an official retirement, which considering he has not played professionally in two years (three in North America) is a little anti-climactic.
That is not how we will remember A.I., as we will think of him as the Shooting Guard who redefined the culture of the National Basketball Association, and brought an urban grit that really did not exist before. We remember him as the man who carried the 76ers on his back, and took them to an NBA Finals, which without him, that team had no business even sniffing. We remember his controversy about “practice” and his four scoring titles, though we also remember that Iverson never saw a shot he never took.
Regardless of how he is viewed, and whether you are a fan of his or not, any man who is a three Time NBA First Team Selection (not to mention three Second Team Selections and an MVP award in 2001) is an automatic first ballot Hall of Fame selection in our book, and we will vault him straight to the top of our list once he is eligible. That year is 2017, as his extra year playing in Turkey will delay his inevitable induction by a year.
The 1984 Hockey HOF Class is up
Our work on the existing Hockey Hall of Fame Classes continue. We have now made our way to the year of 1984 (which for the record is easily among our favourite Classes). The Class of 1984 contains:
Bernie Parent
Jacques Lemaire
Jake Milford
Phil Esposito
Punch Imlach
Gang you know the drill. Check it out, and cast your votes and let us know whether you think they deserved their Hall of Fame induction. Look for upcoming classes soon!
Gaylord Perry comments on the HOF
We almost missed this one. Finding Baseball Hall of Fame players who rally against the steroids era superstars entering Cooperstown is easy. We have written about it here, and the internet is littered with stories about it. However, we found something interesting on the pennlive.com Sports section whereby Gaylord Perry said he would honor those players should they got in. He added that he believed that some of them would get in; but that is as much as we would learn from the former master of the “Spitball”.
Perry never said (or at least the piece didn’t) whether he thought they should be in; just that he would “honor” them. At the very least, we can assume he means that he won’t publically throw a hissy fit (as we would expect many of the HOFers would do) should This could be because he legitimately thinks that, or because he knows he is the one player who might be publically ridiculed if he did.
Actually his name comes up a lot lately. Countless writers and bloggers will talk about the hypocrisy of Baseball’s Hall of Fame for excluding the PED users and including Perry; who was known for using the illegal Spitball, which involved the doctoring of a ball to make the pitch move atypically. He was only caught once, but did admit to using it often; hence the confusion as to what is “acceptable” cheating in MLB, and what isn’t it.
Come to think of it; is there any other Hall of Famer you would rather hear from?