As it turns out, however, LeBron once received a bonkers offer from the NBA for him to grace the Dunk Contest. This revelation was made by none other than former Dunk Contest champ Vince Carter, who apparently, received the same offer as well. According to Carter, even the late, great Kobe Bryant and Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady were also tapped by the league: “I know for a fact, some years back, the NBA tried this tactic as far as upping the ante a little bit, a million dollars,” Carter said on his podcast (h/t Tyler Conway of Bleacher Report). “They threw around some names, I remember it was LeBron, Kobe, T-Mac—my name was thrown in there of course, and it was a few other people for $1 million. But you obviously couldn’t get the commitment of everyone to do it.”
Tracy McGrady Rumors
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Tracy McGrady
Position: -
Born: 05/24/79
Height: 6-8 / 2.03
Weight:210 lbs. / 95.3 kg.
Earnings: $163,057,818 ($245,988,035*)
Born: 05/24/79
Height: 6-8 / 2.03
Weight:210 lbs. / 95.3 kg.
Earnings: $163,057,818 ($245,988,035*)
On Victor Wembanyama and on if it’s possible seeing him acquiring a $100 million dollar deal out the gate… Sonny Vaccaro: I’m on record saying to nobody I guess to the people I talk to on the show I did, but this is a no brainer because Michael — everything in the world starts with Michael with shoe contracts, and then LeBron and then Zion [Williamson]. Zion did very very well. But Victor is in a different position today. Why? We’ve already ordained him and we’ve seen he’s brilliant. The greatest minds in the world — go back to LeBron and Kobe and Tracy. Go back to all those kids; all the other great ones and there’s been hundreds of them since then, right? Victor has done it and he’s someone that’s so unique it’s almost… sometimes I’m afraid of my words because I don’t want to be explicit but he’s so physically different than everybody and to me, he was mentally adept at handling his interviews better than any young kid that I’ve ever seen.
Tracy McGrady: Everyone in my hometown knows I'm a better baseball player
“I didn’t play basketball until I was nine or 10 years old, I hated basketball,” said Tracy McGrady. “Everyone in my hometown knows that I’m a better baseball player. When I was a junior, I had some problems with my arm…Someone from Adidas saw me at a football practice and said ‘if you want to become affiliated with Adidas, you have to stop playing football.’ Then I took off for my junior year to school in North Carolina and it took off from there.
“In Central Florida where I grew up, it was probably the worst drug-infested neighborhood in that area,” said McGrady. “My grandmother was a janitor, my mom was a housekeeper, and that was my motivation…Being that I grew up in that type of environment and with everything I saw from my mom and grandmother grinding every day, those conditions programmed me to want better. My focus was only on the non-stop grind. I always knew how to compartmentalize things like hanging with my friends, with getting the work done.”
“It validates me as a certified hooper,” said McGrady. “Regardless of what anyone says about what I didn’t accomplish, for him to state that, just lets me know, I was that dude. I didn’t win any championships. It takes a team to win that. But when it comes to the individual player and who I was and the work I put in, that’s all I need to hear…The respect from my peers means more to me than anything else.”
“When I had microfracture surgery, it was probably the most depressing time of my life. I was fighting every year to try to win a championship. Then with the Houston Rockets I thought we finally had the team I had been waiting for. My knee blew out on me, and I knew the history of microfracture surgery. I knew I was done and I wouldn’t get that chance to compete for a championship…I hid for almost a year. I didn’t want to talk about basketball, I was just depressed man. I was asking, why is this happening to me at this time? I had been true to this game and this is stripped from me? When I got the nomination for the Hall of Fame, all of that stripped away.”
10 Aug 22
