10 Biggest "What If?" Questions In NBA History
NBA history is filled with tantalizing "What If?" scenarios, but which are most worth asking?
"What If?" questions are like cocaine for sports fans. Sure, we love discussing tangible things, like current events, upcoming games, or WHY CAN'T THE KNICKS JUST BE A NORMAL BASKETBALL TEAM!? You know, the kind of things that turn polite conversations into shouting matches. However, the idea of the unknowable, of completely hypothetical, alternate timelines, pique the interest of sports fans more than anything based in reality.
Every sport has its own massive "What If?" questions. Baseball: what if Babe Ruth played in the modern day, with minorities and no whisky in the dugout? Football: what if Bo Jackson hadn't broken his hip? Soccer: what if Americans weren't d*cks and had just named their bonkers fight club sport anything else? All of those are unanswerable, but still really fun to think about.
Basketball has its fair share of "What If" questions too. Throughout the NBA's 71 year existence, a number of seismic events have drastically altered the course of the sport and have left hoops fans the world over forever wondering what could have been. If we're really lucky, someone will invent Dr. Farnsworth's What-If Machine so we can get some concrete answers, but in the off chance that Elon Musk isn't working on that very project at this very moment, we'll have to answer these questions ourselves.
10. What If... Tracy McGrady Hadn't Left Toronto?
In reality, Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter's egos couldn't exist side-by-side and T-Mac, desperate to prove how great he was, fled Toronto to sign with the Orlando Magic in 2000. Although both men would go on to have cherished individual careers, they experienced little-to-no playoff success. Could that have been different if they were able to rein in their egos and play together in the North?
McGrady and Carter are among the most dynamic scorers to ever play basketball; a back court of them in their primes could have been one of the highest scoring duos ever. They would have complimented each other well: T-Mac could have taken the toughest defensive assignment every night, while VC's three point shooting would have demanded constant attention from defenses, allowing T-Mac to drive to the basket at will. Also, Toronto undeniably had a better built team, as they were able to take Allen Iverson to the brink in the 2001 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.
It's impossible to say whether they would have won a championship together, especially with Shaq and Kobe running the league, but a working aliance of T-Mac and VC would have been incredibly fun for the entire NBA.