Circa 2004, San Antonio Spurs weren’t used to dangerous scoring spurts. As the best defensive side in the NBA, they prided themselves in keeping teams and their stars from shining.
On December 9, against a rather tired-looking Houston Rockets, they weren’t going to veer from that script. And with less than a minute on the clock in the fourth quarter, Gregg Popovich - arguably the greatest coach of all time - was already dusting off the drawing board, content.
And then, Tracy McGrady happened. When the Rockets’ guard was done, his team won 81-80. The rarely-amused Popovich was as befuddled as the rest of the team. What he and his set of so-called defensive juggernauts witnessed on the night was never to be replicated again. Over 15 years later, we’re yet to see a shooting display as venomously effective.
Fans of the late Kobe Bryant might argue that the Los Angeles Lakers great had won games from a position of despair on numerous occasions in an effort to go a tier up on the McGrady spectacle. And they are right in that Bryant had, possibly, the greatest clutch gene of all after only Michael Jordan. But for all their scoring prowess, neither scored 13 points in 33 seconds.
And that’s exactly what McGrady did, an array of threes so unconventional you had to wait for an entire generation and the likes of Steph Curry to normalise it.
McGrady to date puts up a picture of smug when the story comes up. Just as those in the Spurs line-up are yet to fully digest it. In fact, Bruce Bowen, one of the finest perimeter defenders of all times, wanted to play it down to the best of his competitive ability but failed.
“That’s one of those situations where you have a guy that happens to know there is no pressure. Tracy had nothing to lose,” says Bowen. “He could pull up from anywhere because he knows he doesn’t have a lot of time. I still believe the easiest shots are when the shot-clock is running down because there is no thought process in it.”
“If there is thought process you might second guess certain things, you might get caught thinking the game. Well, they were down and he just had to whatever he could to get the shot off quickly. I don’t want to take away from what he accomplished, but it wasn’t a scenario where you say, ‘aight, fellas we have to defend Tracy this way because we only have 30 seconds left’.
Describing the nature of McGrady’s shot-making on the night, Bowen said: “In transition, you don’t have a man guarding you. You just pick up the guy closest to you and no one was meeting Tracy at half-court trying to get it from him. It just one of those situations you learn from. I just hate that we were on the backside of it. But if my memory serves me right, I think the year was still good for us.”
Bowen was referring to the fact that they went onto win the title after defeating defending champions Detroit Pistons. While the likes of Bowen and Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili were integral to the outcome, it was Tim Duncan’s stoic brilliance as a centre and as a leader which became the central cog around which Popovich orchestrated another Spurs’ symphony.
“Tim was more about his IQ of the game. Adjust to different moments. First three years, evolution to who he was. He always added something to his game every single year. He wasn’t predictable at all. What separates the good players from the greats is that they are able to change their game, adapt each and every year,” said the three-time NBA champion.
As interested as he was in Duncan’s prowess, the five-time all-defensive first-team player of the year was disappointed in the defensive output in the new era. “More of it is about the intricacies of the NBA. A lot of the players these days are simply not being taught defence at the AAU (Association of American Universities) level,” he rues.
“The good teams in the NBA have rotations. You have to go over those rotations every single day in practice. For eight years in San Antonio, I remember our defensive rotations. I remember us going through a drill of working on our defensive rotations so it becomes a habit. It becomes a part of who you are. It’s not one thing you can do a little bit and think I got it. Any individual who enjoys a game of golf, there is one point of golf you might hit the ball perfectly but you have to continue to practice in order to duplicate what you have done so a lot of it has to do with youth. It’s no longer that the defensive concept where I am trying to stand in front of this guy, what you have now is ‘I’m going to influence him going in this direction and we'll see what we have to deal with from there’.”
That said, not long after Bowen’s stay in the NBA, the league took on a new theme with three-pointers becoming centerstage with the likes of Curry and Klay Thompson radically altering the narrative. Besides the increase in the percentage of threes taken, numerous guards have also extended their range significantly, some shooting from the half-court with more consistency than most did from the 22-foot range a decade ago.
Bowen, though, has the defensive answer.
“It’s about recognition of who they are and understanding that they have that ability so you have to pressure upon those guys further up the court and not sit back at the three-point line saying ‘okay, I’m at the line and I know that he might shoot it from here’,” he explains.
“No. It’s one of those things when you see a guy pulling up from the logo, stay attached and get a hand up, don’t try to block the shot. Make sure that he’s trying to make the shot, it’s not a shot that he feels like he’s in rhythm with. That’s my thought process. I feel like that’s detail and effort. If you pay attention to detail, you see these guys do this, coming.”
He throws in the names of a few legends in an effort to describe his versatility as much as show what the next generation needs to do. “I knew that AI (Allen Iverson) enjoys getting guys in transition, that means I needed to pick him up sooner. I knew that Steve Nash didn’t want to shoot the ball quick, so I could play off of him in transition situations because he was probing to get the ball to others. All that has to do with paying attention to the film and paying attention to detail and who players are. I would guard Curry differently than I would (James) Harden. Everybody you’re going against, you have to change to their strengths and not just kind of rely on what you did with someone else,” he said.