Jeff Teague Had a Hilarious Tracy McGrady Story From His Atlanta Hawks Season

Jeff Teague had an Atlanta Hawks Tracy McGrady story after the latter went viral for his Kobe Bryant take.

Jeff Teague Had a Hilarious Tracy McGrady Story From His Atlanta Hawks Season

Jeff Teague, Tracy McGrady (Image via Firstsportz)

Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal ruled the hearts of NBA fans throughout the 2000s. But they weren’t the only ones who had cult-like followings. Their contemporaries Allen Iverson, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady were some of the most ardently followed and idolized players of all time. Jeff Teague was in middle school when these five players were tearing it up on the NBA stage during the early 2000s.

T-Mac, like Kobe Bryant, was a shooting guard drafted to the NBA straight out of high school. After his initial outburst with Toronto and his subsequent boom in Orlando, many predicted that he would battle Bryant in a tussle for the title of the best player in the NBA. They also believed McGrady would go on to win championships. However, after a few disappointments in Florida, T-Mac moved to Houston.

Injuries to him and Yao Ming prevented the Rockets from ever making a serious challenge for the NBA title. By the time Tracy McGrady moved to the Knicks, he was a spent force, with his knee preventing him from being the explosive scorer he once was. So when he signed with the Hawks in 2011-12, the expectations of him were minimal. But his new teammate, Jeff Teague, didn’t quite view him that way.

Speaking on the 520 Podcast show, the former All-Star revealed how he felt when Tracy McGrady joined the Hawks in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 NBA season:

My third year, I was starting point guard. He came to our team. And he was really pi***d that I was starting. He pulled up to training in the big a** Maybach. I’m like ‘Damn! That’s T-Mac in the Maybach with some big a** boujee clothes on.’ They started calling out the starting lineups in groups. Ni*** looked at me like ‘This ni***?’ I’m like ‘Yeah.’ He’s like ‘This ni***’s trash.’ My heart dropped, like he got me f***ed up.

Tracy McGrady had a contentious Kobe-Shaq take recently

The talents of Tracy McGrady were there for everyone to see during the early and mid-2000s. The man had 13 points in 34 seconds to lead his team to a clutch win in a game. He had two scoring titles and averaged 30 during the slowest and toughest scoring era in league history. Despite being on a team low on talent and with Grant Hill injured, McGrady brought the Orlando Magic to the playoffs year after year.

Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant
Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant (FS Image)

So when he got on to a recent episode of First Take, McGrady put his time in the NBA into perspective. Speaking on LeBron James’ take on ring culture, he called his own number when talking about worthy NBA stars without a championship to their name:

“We have too many players that come through this league that are championship worthy,” McGrady said on ESPN’s First Take. “Replace me with Kobe Bryant with Shaquille O’Neal, I don’t win a championship?”

McGrady has every reason to feel this way. Anyone who can terrorize NBA defenses and morph coaching strategies at the level that he did has the right to say it. Yet, it is hard to see if he’d wing more rings than Kobe Bryant had he been Shaq’s teammate during the early 2000s. O’Neal was a dominant player even before that stretch, but till Bryant came into his prime and Dwyane Wade later on, he didn’t win a title based on it.

We will never know the answer to this question, but it surely makes for great small talk in sport fan circles.

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