Tracy McGrady gave his two cents on Tuesday about Steph Curry becoming the first player in NBA history to unanimously win the NBA MVP award. And his views on Curry winning the league's most coveted individual player award for the second consecutive year weren't too congratulatory.
In the clip above from ESPN's The Jump, T-Mac seemed to speak in a curmudgeon-like tone about the difference between the NBA today versus the league during Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal's playing days during the '90s. He argued there were more superstars per team as well as more "top-notch competition" than what exists in this current NBA era.
But during MJ and the Bulls historic 72-win season during the 1995-1996 regular season—a record broken by the Curry-led Warriors in April—Jordan was head and shoulders over his competition for MVP. You can check the graphic here for details on the MVP voting list of that 1996-1996 season where there were "more superstars," according to McGrady.
By the end of his diatribe, T-Mac seemed to backtrack and contradict his words, saying that Curry winning the 2015-2016 MVP award is "well-deserved" and crediting him for "rewriting the record books." So does McGrady have a valid point about Curry, or is he merely sounding like a lazy journalist with no research to support his argument?
Also, how does he explain the NBA era that he played in, where he was a scoring phenom during the early-to-mid 2000s, yet didn't win an MVP award and set a few scoring records? We wonder if he believes his scoring days of going off 13 points in 33 seconds were due to a league with "watered down" talent and minimal defense, or if he's thinks he's deserving of a Hall of Fame induction because he played against more superstars than Curry.
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