Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady – NBA players who struggled with injuries in their careers – Part-1
Vince Carter
Vince Carter is currently a player for the Phoenix Suns and can play at both shooting guard and small forward positions. He averages 21.3 points, 6 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game. After he joined the National Basketball Association,
he surprised basketball team players and fans. In 1999, he was given the NBA Rookie of the Year award. In 2000, while playing in the Olympics in Sydney, Carter showed an unforgettable dunk by jumping over a 7’ 2’’ tall French player, Frederic Weis.
He became famous and a renowned player of basketball right after he won the NBA Slam Dunk Competition back in 2000. From 2000-2007, he was an eight time NBA All-Star. During the 2002-2003 NBA season, Carter was on an average of
20.6 points in 43 games when he missed 39 games because of the injuries. But the following season, he was voted 2004 NBA All-Star game. While he was with the Toronto Raptors, their success rate was much high. His presence made a lot of difference in that team.
There was a time when he was thought of as the next Jordan.
During his career, he had suffered from major injuries and the surgeries became the major reasons of his declined performance. He suffered an ankle injury and a knee injury for which he got operated and afterwards failed to perform
as good as he started. After his arthroscopic surgery, he had missed many games, as a lot of time is required to recover. He had achieved the career highs of 51 points per game twice, 14 assists and 16 rebounds. His profile would have been much better if he
would not have been suffered from these injuries.
Tracy McGrady
Tracy McGrady is currently playing for Detroit Pistons. He had also played in Toronto Raptors, New York Knicks, Houston Rockets and Orlando Magic. In case of McGrady, a score is possible from anywhere in the field. He was often
compared to George Gervin. He has a career high with average 32.1 points, 7.9 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game. In 2003, the SLAM Magazine selected him in Top 75 Players of All-Time.
He has an impressive collection of awards. He won the NBA Most Improved Player award in 2001 and remained a seven time NBA All-Star from 2001 to 2007. In 2002-03, he won the All-NBA First Team title and later declared the NBA Scoring
Champion. He is a three times winner of All-NBA Second Game and two times winner of All NBA Third Game. If we see the history of the past twelve years of NBA, he is the fourth player who had scored 60 points per game.
Unfortunately he had never been able to participate in all the games of NBA season. He had hardly played four games in 2000 season due to an ankle injury. Later he was not able to perform well in the season because of back ache.
Although he had back spasms, preventing him to perform well, still he had averaged 24 points. Afterwards, he had to undergo arthroscopic surgery for left shoulder and knee and missed quite a lot of games. Had there been no injuries, he would have touched the
heights, only few players would have seen.
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