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- NBA Hall of Fame member Tracy McGrady shared a wild story about camel racing in Qatar with Carmelo Anthony, Klay Thompson, and Luke Walton
- The 7-time NBA All Star also shared the hardest part about selling his $19 million private jet and what having a private jet was like
- Read more NBA stories here
There’s no denying that Tracy McGrady was one of the greatest NBA players of all time. He was a 1st Round NBA Draft pick by the Raptors, a 7-time NBA All-Star, 2-time NBA scoring champ, and he was paid a fortune for his contributions on the court.
Throughout his NBA career spanning across three decades (1997–2013), Tracy McGrady made $162,425,370 in career earnings. That’s not including any endorsements. T-Mac is a very wealthy man and he recently shared some wild stories about some of the stuff rich people get up to that the rest of us might never hear about.
Tracy McGrady was a guest on the Knuckleheads podcast with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles. You can stream the full episode below but I’ve pulled two stories from the episode that you can read through. In the first story, McGrady talks about going ‘Camel Racing’ in Qatar with Carmelo Anthony, Klay Thompson, and Luke Walton. The other story is about how Tracy used to own a $19 million private jet and he discusses how great that was and shares the hardest part about selling it…
Tracy McGrady Shares Story About Camel Racing With Klay Thompson
Knuckleheads: I heard you been camel racing.
Tracy McGrady: Who told you that?! Nah, I took a trip to Qatar. It was me, Melo, Clay Thompson, and Luke Walton. So we took a trip over there to promote the World Cup. And they asked us if we wanted to do some camel racing.
I didn’t know what it was ‘yeah, why not? I’ll go see some camels race.’ They were like ‘are you going to participate?’ and I was like ‘how?’ and they were like ‘you’ll see when we get out there.’
So we get to this track. We are on the runway. The camels are over here and they give us remote controls and I’m like ‘yo, what are these remote controls for?’ They got a little man on the camels with a whip. So we are controlling the mini dude on the camel with the whip, just spankin’ his ass.
You know me, I’m a fool. I kept hitting that thing tearing his ass up. And I ended up winning the race but I ain’t never seen anything like that. I didn’t know what to expect but that was dope though. Having the little dude on there with the whip, that was some crazy shit and I enjoyed that.
The Hardest Part About Selling His $19 Million Private Jet…
Tracy McGrady: I had a Falcon 2000. It was a corporate jet. It was probably one of the best traveling jets that you could have, an 11-passenger.
Knuckleheads:How much was it?
Tracy McGrady: It was a lot. It was $19 million.
Knuckleheads: Laughing
Tracy McGrady: It was $19 million. So what happened is I had a business manager who knew how to structure those deals for me and we talked about it and made sure it made financial sense to do something like that and I was like ‘let’s go for it’. I think I flew to Kansas to pick out how I wanted my jet to look
My tail number was TM863863 which was the area code where I’m from. And then I had T1 Mac on the plane.
What was crazy though bro, I had the same pilots, I rotated my pilots, and then I had a couple of stewardesses. So they knew what I liked so when I get on the plane they had everything lined up for me.
But my kids though, my kids were younger, my kids were loving it. And when I sold my jet I tell you my kids were so mad at me, bro.
Every time we used to go to the airport, every time we used to travel, they’d ask me “are we going to the private airport?” and I’d tell them nahhh.
It was so convenient though, so convenient because I traveled a lot. Then I was afraid after 9/11 to fly commercial. So when 9/11 happened, I didn’t fly commercial until I was with the USA Team and we went to Puerto Rico. It was all private planes. I had a fear, it was anxiety.
Check Out The Full ‘Knuckleheads’ Episode With Tracy McGrady
You can stream the full T-Mac episode of Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles by hitting ‘play’ above. Othe highlights of this episode include McGrady talking about signing a $12 million contract with Adidas right out of high school (21:08), playing with Vince Carter (33:10), and going to play for the Orlando Magic (43:01).