It’s Style Week at Hardwood Paroxysm!
The NBA is a league of points and point differentials, wins and losses, titles and playoff seeds. It’s also a league of artistry and aesthetics, a thousand different stylistic elements, often divorced entirely from outcomes, that all work together to elevate our experience. Throughout this week, Hardwood Paroxysm has been exploring those stylistic elements. From jerseys to post-game fashion, jump shot forms to signature dribbles, personalities and demeanors, and the intersection of music, pop culture and basketball; we mean to leave no aesthetic stone unturned.
For our weekly group post here at Fansided proper, we’ve decided to share and explain some of the players who have helped shape our own on-court style, meager as it is. These are our rec league style heroes.
Tracy McGrady, Smooth for Days
By Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh)
Nothing is easy for me athletically. I can manage in certain circumstances—family wiffle ball games, kickball with my third grade class, drunken backyard frisbee. But as intensity and competition increase, my ability to effectively function decreases in logarithmic fashion. On the basketball court, my norm is missed layups, dribbles off the knee and out of bounds, defensive blow-bys, and lots and lots of falling down. Occasions of spontaneous competence are characterized by wild flailing, which are then followed by more falling down.
In short, I’m bad at basketball and it’s pretty easy to see.
Having internalized my own physical inadequacies, I’ve always consciously tried to project a McGrady-ian sensibility. I can do literally none of the things Tracy McGrady is capable of on the basketball court. But the thing I lust after most is his silky smooth detachment. In his prime, every one of his basketball movements was effortlessly languid. His demeanor was two parts confidence, one part apathy, all accentuated by softly flowing talent. McGrady was capable of anything and everything, and couldn’t be bothered with the struggles of mortal men. Sleepily sliding and gliding his way around and through a defense, he made the game his own without ever appearing to work for it.
That’s not to say he was lazy or actually played apathetically. McGrady was a fierce competitor, with plenty of fiery moments. But the default setting on his physical and emotional state was “take ‘er easy.”
Trying to emulate an on-court style is tricky when you don’t have the accompanying ability. My crossovers may be smooth and flowy in my mind, but in reality they’re still slow and deliberate in all the worst ways. Copying his lidded gaze doesn’t make my defensive assignments any less laborious. Wriggling my mind into a McGrady state of zen doesn’t lengthen my arms or my stride, or protect my jumpers from the side of the backboard and embarrassing caroms to places unknown. As hard as I try, my game still has more Madsen and Hansbrough in it than McGrady.
Being Tracy McGrady means not letting others see how hard you’re working. It’s a trick I’ve just never mastered.