Twitter is all atwitter with the word that Tracy McGrady wants out of Houston and inside the Rockets locker room there is only the dull hum of fluorescent lighting.
"It doesn't affect us," said forward Chuck Hayes. "It's part of the business. I guess the organization felt that it needed to be taken care of and they did it in the best professional way they could. I am sad to see him in this situation. But it happens."
As far as distractions go, the latest chapter in the McGrady story is no different to his teammates than one of those posters of a bikini-clad model that are sometimes held up along on the baseline when you're attempting a free throw. It's just part of the game.
Now it's a part that is definitely in the past with general manager Daryl Morey issuing a statement that said the Rockets have agreed to look into trade opportunities and coach Rick Adelman closing and virtually bolting the door on any chance of a McGrady return in a Houston uniform.
"I would seriously doubt that," Adelman said. "He's made it clear that he wants to move on and we'll see what we can do."
After Tuesday night's 108-100 win over the New Orleans Hornets, the Rockets now have a 19-13 record because they've had the narrow focus of a laser beam in a season when they've had to play without their two linchpins, McGrady and Yao Ming, both of whom underwent major surgery in the past 10 months.
Yet the Rockets have survived and even thrived by employing a faster tempo and a sharing-the-ball philosophy that Adelman wasn't ready to compromise for the sake of one player attempting a comeback from microfracture knee surgery.
"He wanted more playing time, and we weren't ready to do that at this point," Adelman said. "So it came to a head, and we'll see where it goes from here.
"He has been hurt for a year and a half. The thing people want to write about is who he was two years ago. He isn't that right now. We have a whole team. It's not just about what he wants or what he was going to want. It was about what can he do to help us win? That was the bottom line to me."
"Last year, we were able to work him in, but we had Yao, we had Ron (Artest), we had a lot more room for error. We could run things through him in the past, and he was able to create a lot of offense for everybody else. We're playing a different way. We're trying to push the ball. We have to play a certain way to give us a chance to win. We needed him to be part of that. I don't think that was possible today.
"Believe it or not, I had a feeling this was going to happen all along."
When McGrady arrived for the start of training camp, pronouncing himself ahead of schedule in his rehab, Adelman braced himself for the storm that was brewing. When McGrady announced in a November e-mail that he was planning his return on a certain date, Adelman could feel the ground begin to quake. Then when Adelman agreed to a trial period starting on Dec. 15 that would put McGrady back onto the floor for 7-8 minutes a game in four sets of back-to-backs in the schedule, the coach had more than a few doubts.
McGrady made his cameos for six games, looked slow and often unable to keep up or compete, and then said he wanted more playing time.
"I didn't know what the answer would be after 7-8 minutes," Adelman said. "Do you go up to 15, up to 20, then you do that for one or two games and it was going to have to be 30? It seemed that was the direction it was being pushed, and I was not comfortable and not ready to do that."
With the exception of one game, McGrady showed no explosiveness going to the basket.
"I think that's pretty obvious if you watch him," Adelman said. "He's such a great creator. I still believe he has so much skill and he's so talented and so smart that he can be an effective offensive player. But it has to be a certain way. The ball has to go through him."
The Rockets were not going to change their style or their attitude on the court to squeeze McGrady back into the mix and the sense in the locker room is they haven't now limited their potential for this season by agreeing to cut McGrady loose.
"I don't believe so," Adelman said. "He could have had a real positive effect if he was willing to accept the minutes and play like we're trying to play. I didn't know if that was going to be possible going down the line.
"We were hoping he could be a difference-maker. ... But then there has got to be an acceptance of how we were going to play and how he was going to fit into the group.
"I didn't know what was coming down the line. The envelope was being pushed every time we did something. ... I truly believe that maybe he thinks he can turn it on and be an effective player. The way we're playing didn't jibe with that. Maybe on another team he could fit in and play 25 minutes, and they can go to him. I don't know."
What Adelman knew was that he was not going to sacrifice his team and the chemistry that had been built to accommodate McGrady, who had gone so far as to childishly put on his game uniform and sit in his locker before a November game in Minnesota, weeks before the Rockets were ready to clear him to play.
"That was all part of the process," Adelman said. "He wanted to show he was ready to play. I didn't think it was real cool. We're all dealing with the whole situation. I told him at the time we've got a group here and we're trying to develop something. That's why I say the process wasn't going smooth. It was being pushed. It got to a point where the pushing wasn't going to continue."
Except toward the door.
Now that McGrady has himself on the outside, the Rockets barely notice.
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