The doctors told him that he would be able to play himself back to full strength, but it was not happening. Tracy McGrady was in pain, too much pain to play well. There were too few signs of progress for him to stick with a plan he was ambivalent about to begin with.
Instead, McGrady went with his plan and returned much more confident in it and committed to it. He took 16 days off to rest and strengthen his sore right knee. When he returned, he still had some pain, but even after missing seven games, came back to score 24 points with 10 rebounds and nine assists against the Warriors. This time, he felt right. He did, however, need to get something off his chest.
"I can't stop (the criticism). I'm not going to go in a dark closet and hide by any means. It's funny that people want to come up with their own assumptions of me. They don't know what I go through. Yeah, I've missed some games. I missed a lot of games. It's not like I'm trying to go out there and hurt myself. That's how the body is sometimes. It breaks down. You have injuries. It happens.
"Had I never come back and improved through the regular season, none of this talk would be going on. But because I wanted to do something for my team, getting us off to a great start, because we had a tough schedule... (I did what I) felt was needed and played through 15 games. I got us off to a good start; 10-5 when I left and sat out. Then, when I left, everybody talked like it was a different injury or something. You know, I looked at the schedule and it was pretty favorable with me being out and my guys going out and winning some ballgames without me. So I took a couple weeks off to rehab, get my knee strong, and now, I'm back."
McGrady always maintained he does not care about criticism, but on several occasions he has shown that he does.
Because he believes he came back from his injury too early, he also can now believe he came back at the right time. There is still pain in the knee, but this time, he seems to accept it. On his first night back, he also seemed to have little difficulty playing through it.
ROCKETS 119, WARRIORS 108: The Rockets, with a blowout in sight, had to sweat out a few fourth-quarter minutes. They were not complaining. They saw a 22-point lead cut in half, but never really felt threatened since they had Tracy McGrady back after he had missed seven games and had rolled long enough to feel too good to worry about a few rocky minutes. McGrady came within one assist of a triple-double, and six Rockets scored in double-figures to control most of the game and start a California back-to-back (the Rockets play the Clippers in the second half) with a solid win.
