The Young Guns Come Out Blazing - highly improved fourth season player Tracy McGrady - Brief Article

Basketball Digest, Summer, 2001

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN HIGH-schoolers jumping straight into the pros was big news. The phenomenon started in 1974, when the ABA's Utah Stars drafted prep star Moses Malone. The next year, the NBA drafted two high-schoolers--Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby--among its first 20 picks.

It was just six years ago that Kevin Garnett, with considerable tsk-tsking from the basketball establishment, led a new generation of preps-to-pros into the NBA. And last year, Darius Miles became the highest-drafted high-schooler ever selected when he was taken at No. 3 by the Los Angeles Clippers.

Our cover this issue features another prep-to-pro, Tracy McGrady, drafted No. 9 by Isiah Thomas in 1997. While it's hard to know where McGrady will ultimately land on the list of the NBA's greatest players, his stellar fourth season compares favorably with those of the two best preps-to-pros of the 1990s, Garnett and one of McGrady's closest pals, Kobe Bryant.

McGrady, 22, was the only NBA player to garner three of our awards this season, All-NBA, All-Defensive, and Most Improved Player. And if we had an All-Moxie squad, McGrady might have cracked that, too. In April, McGrady threw down a sick jam on the unslammable, finger-wagger Dikembe Mutombo. When we caught up with McGrady a couple days afterward, he was still buzzing:

"I owed Dikembe. He got me in the preseason--I tried to dunk on him, and he blocked my stuff. I said to myself, `I'm going to get him tonight.' I was trying to pay him back and, boy, I got him. I got him good. I had to stare him down to let him know I was there."