Losing McGrady could put Raptors on endangered list

Sporting News, The, June 19, 2000 by Dave D'Alessandro

That crash you heard emanating from the north last Thursday was the noise you get when a 21-year-old kid decides his head coach is too juvenile to play for.

That essentially was what Tracy McGrady was saying, after carefully considering two alternatives:

1. Do I give the Toronto franchise false hope and announce that I'm going to hang in there with a coach who has done me some good personally, even if the guy--as Dr. Leonard McCoy used to say--is not exactly working on all thrusters?

2. Or do I come right out and admit that between Butch Carter's ears is a banana republic in turmoil and that I don't want to be associated with an organization that allows its coach to be a perpetual source of ridicule?

T-Mac chose No. 2 the other day, and, well, did the Raps really give him any choice? Did Butch?

I'm going to try hard not to turn this into a Bash Butch Forum because contrary to the prevailing consensus, he has some good qualities. He was able to get two young stars to develop on the right timetable. He managed to get the kids to interact fairly well with older guys willing to do the grunt work. And, yes, I like the fact he is a bit of an iconoclast. But when Butch asserted that the team's ownership was among the "forces out to destroy" the club back in March, you had to think that he probably lacks the political refinement to last too long in this very political business. When he claimed his players were more interested in their next contract than in competing against the Knicks, you had to think he was making a conscious choice to alienate every guy on his roster.

Finally, when he told Glen Grunwald that he should be rewarded for the club's first-round elimination by being made general manager, it seemed he was convinced of his invulnerability and might as well go for it all--while Charles Oakley, who for all his fractured metaphors is the club's wisest man, said it was grounds for firing.

Were Butch's actions merely contrivances, attempts to create that Us Guys culture, that fortress mentality that some coaches thrive on? Or did they reside in the other extreme--misdirected plays, undisguised efforts to get fired from a man who knows he has lost every ally he ever had on the club? More to the point, what does one make of all this when one is 21 and must decide where he wants to spend the next seven years of his career? If you're T-Mac, you're probably confused. You're probably uneasy. Most of all, you're probably fed up. "With all that stuff going on, the veterans not wanting to be there ... then you've got to look at the situation with Vince (Carter)," McGrady says, alluding to his cousin's free-agent status in 2002. "I mean, it's going to be real tough to sign me back."

Oakley, for one, would advise McGrady to take Chicago's money and run. "Tracy wasn't going to get better with Butch because Butch can't teach, and he can't teach young players," Oakley told a Toronto reporter. No word on whether Butch is considering litigation now that the most righteous voice in his locker room has accused him of being an incompetent, duplicitous laughingstock.

How the club feels about Butch is more complicated. The team is reluctant to eat the contract it gave him just eight months ago (four years, $6 million), and even public reprimands won't help bridge the gap between Butch and his players. McGrady likely will sign with the Bulls or Magic, and Toronto wouldn't even be able to get much in a sign-and-trade deal because his base-year comp status would bring only a $4.5 million player.

So what is the club to do? Even if T-Mac is using these sideshows as a convenient excuse to bolt, what does it say about the team that it can't retain its best players? Is it, and the NBA, prepared to deal with the resentment of the fans who were just beginning to embrace the club? And what impact does this have on Vince's decision to play the market or not in 2002? It sure seems like Butch is the linchpin here. If he's dumped, maybe some of these problems are resolved. And perhaps the opposite is true: If T-Mac leaves, the dominoes start falling and the Raptors go back on the endangered list. Just ask Butch himself.

"I was thinking that it's a little scary that he might not be here," Carter said of T-Mac a few months ago. "The kid has a great understanding of what's going on. He just has a knack and a maturity far beyond his years." Unfortunately for Butch, T-Mac has a better grasp on things than even he thought.

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