Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on Saturday, author Malcolm Gladwell called Tracy McGrady “a slacker in the top one percent.” In other words: T-Mac squandered his physical gifts with a poor worth ethic. (But Gladwell also stipulated, “The only places I like applying the 10,000-hour rule in sports is playing quarterback and golf.”) For the record, McGrady has been Sloan’s unofficial poster boy for wasted chances since the 2011 conference, in which Jeff Van Gundy and Daryl Morey anointed T-Mac as the antithesis of Gladwell’s “10,000-hour rule”—that the key to success in any field is purposeful practice for 10,000 hours.

Gladwell: Tracy McGrady was a slacker in the top 1 percent. #ssac #ouch — Howard Beck (@HowardBeck) March 1, 2014

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