Tracy McGrady found out he's on the Hall of Fame ballot while he was on TV

When the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame released the list of nominees for enshrinement in the Hall’s class of 2017 on Wednesday afternoon, we found out that Tracy McGrady will make his first appearance on the ballot this year. The man himself, it seems, found out last week, on the set of the very good Rachel Nichols-led ESPN show “The Jump” … and from the looks of things, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing:

[Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Basketball contest now | Free NBA Yahoo Cup entry]

“I’m blushing right now,” said a laughing McGrady, who serves as a panelist on “The Jump” and a commentator on ESPN’s NBA coverage now that his playing days are behind him. “I don’t know what to say!”

When Nichols asked him what the news meant to him, though, McGrady quickly turned reflective.

“You shook me up right there,” he said. “We’ll see what happens. I mean, it’s great to be a nominee, and to be on that ballot, you know. We’ll see what happens. Fingers crossed. A long career, and this is something that I didn’t see happening when I first started […] from high school to the NBA, and look where we are now.”

Joining McGrady in the ranks of players making their first appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot this year are defensive ace Ben Wallace, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year, four-time All-Star, five-time All-NBA selection and six-time All-Defensive Team choice who served as the paint-protecting heartbeat of the 2004 NBA champion Detroit Pistons, and diminutive point guard Muggsy Bogues, who carved out a 14-year NBA career and ranks in the top 20 all-time in assists and the top 60 all-time in steals despite standing just 5-foot-3.

Other notable former players who have previously come up for consideration but fallen short of earning enshrinement, and who will again appear on this year’s ballot, include Chris Webber, Tim Hardaway, Kevin Johnson, Mark Aguirre, Maurice Cheeks, Terry Cummings, Marques Johnson, Bobby Jones, Sidney Moncrief and Mark Price, all of whom will be considered by the Hall’s North American Committee. Several others, including Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc and Dino Radja, will have their candidacies evaluated by the International Committee.

Others making their first appearance on the ballot include Kansas coach Bill Self, longtime NBA referee Jake O’Donnell, Connecticut prep coaching legends Jere Quinn and Bob Saulsbury, Harry Statham, the winningest coach in college basketball history, and Jim Phelan, who spent nearly half a century on the sideline at Mount Saint Mary’s. A full list of the nominees up for consideration by the Hall’s North American, Women’s, Early African-American Pioneers, International and Contributor and Veterans committees can be found here.

As noted by Dan Feldman of ProBasketballTalk, McGrady’s addition to this year’s group of nominees suggests that the powers that be at the Hall have decided to ignore his 2013 stint with the San Antonio Spurs. He signed with Gregg Popovich’s club on the final day of the regular season, and while he didn’t play in the Spurs’ season finale, he did see 31 minutes of floor time during their run to the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat. (McGrady’s last regular-season appearance came in April of 2012, four full seasons ago, which would technically qualify under the changed eligibility requirements the Hall set forth last year … although McGrady didn’t actually retire until more than a year later, which complicates the logic a bit. If you care about the logic of Hall of Fame eligibility, that is.)

That 2013 playoff run, as you might remember, saw T-Mac play the role of LeBron James on San Antonio’s scout team in practices. That the 34-year-old post-injury McGrady took on such a task gave many of us a laugh, but it was a nod to a prime during which he played like something of a precursor to LeBron — a tall, strong, agile, perimeter player who could punish opponents off the dribble, run his team’s offense and pick out passes others couldn’t see, and exploit an ever-present athleticism advantage to rain buckets on damn near anybody.

[Follow Ball Don’t Lie on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Tumblr]

McGrady told Nichols that enshrinement in the Hall was something he didn’t see coming all those years ago, when he leapt from high-school stardom straight to the NBA with the ninth pick in the first round of the 1997 NBA draft. He did consider it a bit after announcing his retirement from basketball in August of 2013, though:

While I admire the hedge, McGrady was right with the first sentence. Only 23 players in NBA history have scored more than 18,000 points, grabbed more than 5,000 rebounds, and dished more than 4,000 assists over the course of a career, according to Basketball-Reference.com. Fifteen (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Charles Barkley, Jerry West, Larry Bird, Gary Payton, Clyde Drexler, John Havlicek, Scottie Pippen, Hal Greer, Alex English and Rick Barry) already reside in Springfield, Mass. Six (Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen) will join them as soon as their names hit the ballot.

The other two? McGrady and, fittingly enough, his cousin and former Toronto Raptors teammate, Vince Carter, whose Hall of Fame bona fides have been the subject of some debate over the years. Add in the seven All-Star appearances, the seven All-NBA selections and the two scoring titles, and you start to understand why Basketball-Reference’s Hall of Fame Probability Index pegs T-Mac’s odds of enshrinement at 95.5 percent.

Hall of Fame status isn’t purely a numbers game, though. There’s a legitimate chance that McGrady wouldn’t merit a spot in Springfield in the minds of many voters.

Some might look askance at his career-long inability to pair his estimable individual regular-season production with team postseason success; McGrady famously never led a team out of the first round of the playoffs, only advancing later in his career in years he was injured (2009, with the Rockets) or an afterthought spot-minutes greybeard (2013, with the Spurs). Others might cast a jaundiced eye toward McGrady’s candidacy due to the long-repeated assertion — including, eventually, by T-Mac himself — that the preternaturally gifted swingman just didn’t try hard enough to maximize his talents. They might choose not to reward McGrady for what he did accomplish on the court as a means of protesting his failure to accomplish even more.

That, to me, would be a bummer, an unnecessary and ill-considered Play The Right Way diminution of the achievements of one of the most explosive and remarkable scorers of his generation, and one of the best players in the history of two separate franchises, that fails to take into account the wretched supporting casts with which he was surrounded during his time in Orlando and the injury-plagued, never-quite-full-strength teams for which he toiled in Houston. But there’s plenty of time to bash around those debates. Tracy McGrady’s on the Hall of Fame ballot, one step away from being a finalist, and two steps away from Springfield. For now, for today, that’s plenty.

The finalists from the North American and women’s committees for the Class of 2017 will be announced during a press conference at 2017 NBA All-Star Weekend, scheduled for Feb. 18 in New Orleans. The full Class of 2017, including those selected by the direct elect committees, will be announced on April 3 at the Men’s NCAA Final Four in Phoenix. The 2017 class will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in festivities scheduled to take place in Springfield between Sept. 7 and 9.

More NBA coverage:

– – – – – – –

Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

Follow @YourManDevine