When talking about the best basketball players of the early 2000s, there are few held in higher regard than Tracy McGrady. T-Mac was an unstoppable scorer who could beat you with his athleticism or the wide variety of tricks in his bag. While his teams never went far, he was always doing his best to carry subpar teams due to injury or poor roster construction.
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Mike Miller played 17 years in the league. He won Rookie of the Year and later won two titles as a role player of the Heatles era Miami Heat. He got his start in Orlando with the Magic, though, and over the course of just over two seasons, he learned how to be a pro from McGrady and fellow forgotten star Grant Hill.
Miller appeared on the latest episode of Podcast P with Paul George, and he had some great T-Mac stories to tell. He spoke about how McGrady was a great passer and a hard worker, and how his feel for the game was elite. What really stood out, though, are two stories he told about what a great teammate the two-time scoring champ was.
“I’ll never forget, I sprained my ankle one game, I think it was my first or second year in the league,” Miller said. “And I’m walking off and he says, ‘Don’t worry about this kid, I got you.’ That man had 69 [points]. I said, ‘Damn! I might sprain my ankle every game.’
McGrady was more than capable of taking on an extra scoring burden in those days. This was in the midst of seven straight seasons in which he scored 24.4 points or better per game.
A little research shows that Miller might have embellished the story a bit, as McGrady’s career high was 62 points. The game in he mentions appears to be from March 8, 2002. Miller played only six minutes before spraining his ankle, then McGrady dropped an even 50 on the Wizards on 18-29 shooting.
T-Mac’s legend has only grown since then, so we can forgive Miller adding some points to his total 23 years later. As he revealed, it wasn’t the only time McGrady had his back.
Tracy McGrady gave Mike Miller a nice going away present
The Magic traded Miller to the Grizzlies midway through his third season, coincidentally doing so on his birthday! Though it was a difficult pill to swallow in the moment, it all worked out, as Miller went on to have a productive 5+ seasons for the Grizzlies, during which he won the Sixth Man of the Year award.
Miller told Paul George that he was out celebrating his birthday with his family, McGrady and his former Florida Gators teammate and current podcast cohost Udonis Haslem when the call came. “T-Mac did go in and basically said, ‘Don’t trade him,’ is what I’ve been told. I got the call, and I looked at T-Mac and I said, ‘I just got traded,’ and he said, ‘No you didn’t.'”
Miller had been traded, and to show his displeasure with the move, McGrady went out a few days later and hung 52 points on the Bulls, the second-highest total of his career. That number would have been higher, but the Magic were winning by so much that head coach Doc Rivers didn’t even play him in the fourth quarter.
McGrady was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 2017, but he was obviously a Hall-of-Fame worthy teammate long before that.
