Addition by Subtraction: Why the Rockets Are a Better Team Without Tracy McGrady

Ron Artest was hopping downcourt to get back on defense, but he had to do something else first. He had, you know, just taken a Shane Battier pass on the right wing, beaten Cleveland’s Anderson Varejao off the dribble, and crushed a one-handed dunk with the left hand—right in between the over-matched Varejao and Ben Wallace.

Artest had to stop by the TNT broadcast booth on the sidelines on his way back and exchange high fives with former Indiana teammate Reggie Miller, who was calling the game as a color analyst.

Such are the Houston Rockets in the wake of supposed superstar Tracy McGrady’s season-ending microfracture knee surgery: a loose, confident group which is playing as well as anybody and can pick apart any top contender in the league on any given night.

Just ask the Cleveland Cavaliers last Thursday night. They’ll tell you all about it—provided that they’re done licking the wounds from their worst loss of the season.

The Cavs came in at 44-11, playing .800 ball, and at the very top of the Eastern Conference. They were winners of five straight, an elite defensive group, and a team that had made a habit out of benching its starters in the fourth quarter of blowout wins.

On Thursday night, they were held to their season lows in points (74) and field goal percentage (33.8) in addition to their worst loss (19 points). And this was a game before which many were wondering what kind of a job Artest and Battier would do in handling the monumental task of guarding LeBron James, the league’s second-leading scorer.

Call it just one game, but James was the one who got bullied on this night.

When Artest wasn’t busy pushing the Cavs’ superstar around physically, Battier was drawing offensive fouls on “King James” and getting him in foul trouble. And when James tried to attack the basket—something that he may do better than anyone in the league—7’6” Yao Ming was there to greet him and make life miserable for the league’s second-leading scorer.

In the end, James scored 21 points, but on 21 shots. The man who has become known as an all-around player and a threat to go for a triple-double on any given night was held without an assist for the first time in his career, not to mention a measly one rebound.

But don’t dare make the mistake of thinking that the Rockets just got up for one game against the Cavs because of Cleveland’s status as a legitimate title contender at the top of the Eastern Conference.

Forty-eight hours earlier, the Rockets made a statement to one of the Western Conference's young hopefuls, the Portland Trail Blazers, with a 98-94 win that demoralized a young Portland group from beginning to end.

In fact, since McGrady scored all of three points in 26 minutes in his last game—a 124-112 Houston loss at Milwaukee—the Rockets have begun to realize the potential that many thought they were capable of at the start of the year.

In sweeping their six-game homestand, head coach Rick Adelman’s squad held opponents to an average of 83.7 points per game. Portland’s 94 points were the high-water mark for a visitor during the last two weeks at the Toyota Center.

And there is more to it than just the results that show why Adelman’s group is better off without McGrady.

"I haven't been the guy who's been fortunate enough to play with Shaq, to play with Tim Duncan. I always seem to have average teams," McGrady was quoted in saying in a recent article at SI.com. "You take me back in my Orlando days with Shaq? Come on, there are no questions. You take a healthy me and switch me out with Paul Pierce [on the current Celtics]? There's no question. There's definitely no question."

The only question after reading that is what made teams like Orlando and now Houston believe that a character like McGrady was going to help them in the first place.

The teams “given” to McGrady in Houston have been elite. Yao Ming is arguably the most-skilled big man in the game. The 28-year old is in the prime of his career and put up 22 and 11 last season, a season that saw McGrady again fail to get out of the first round.

It is one thing to compare McGrady’s first round playoff failures to what Kevin Garnett went through in Minnesota. But T-Mac has been with three different franchises—Toronto, Orlando, and Houston—including a Rockets club that may have been more talented than any team Minnesota fielded for Garnett.

And it was McGrady who came into training camp out of shape at the beginning of the year. For a player who was once being put on a pedestal alongside (or at least just a shade below) Kobe Bryant and James, it’s difficult to remember a time when either Bryant or James were as detrimental to their franchises’ title hopes as McGrady has continued to be.

Funny how Artest was supposed to be the “questionable move” for this Rockets club. But it has been Artest picking up the slack for this Rockets crew in the wake of yet another McGrady absence.

The 6-foot-7, 260-pound Artest has averaged 19.3 points in the six games since McGrady came out of the lineup. For a guy who has yearned for the opportunity to exhibit his offensive prowess alongside his well-documented defensive mastery, this could be the situation that Artest has been waiting for.

Not to mention that it’s a contract year for Ron-Ron.

As the season hits the stretch run, the Rockets are one team that nobody—nobody—wants a part of. With two of the best perimeter defenders in the game in Artest and Battier combined with a healthy Yao carrying the load on the low block, Houston is a matchup nightmare for almost anyone.

Combine that with the evolution of second-year point guard and 2007 first-round pick Aaron Brooks, and Houston isn’t just a collection of big names and heralded talent: It's a a solid team whose whole could be greater than the sum of its parts.

Even parts like Artest, Yao, and Battier that are already large to begin with.

With a team like the one Adelman has right now, you would want to high five them on the court, too.