Yes, Tracy McGrady remembers the 2003 playoffs. Yes, he remembers his eight-seed Orlando Magic up 3-1 against the top-seeded Detroit Pistons, just as Desmond Bane and his 22 points in a 94-88 Game 4 win over Detroit has the No. 8 Magic now.

Yes, he remembers his team blowing that 3-1 lead. But no, he doesn’t admit to the “myth,” in his words, of him infamously saying after Game 4 that “it feels good to get into the second round.”

McGrady, now an analyst for NBC, commented on the quote after a media member asked Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley about it.

“Somebody didn’t really do their homework,” McGrady said on NBC’s postgame show after Monday night’s three playoff games. “He can’t find a video of me saying that. It’s a myth.”

That year was the first in which the first round was best of seven, as opposed to best of five. Had that series happened a year earlier, McGrady’s team would have already advanced.

“It was a joke in the interview session, of me making that joke, ‘Oh, we finally get to go to the second round,’” He said. “OK? It was a joke.”

In the 2002-03 season, McGrady was at the peak of his powers. He led the league in scoring, averaging 32.1 points per game, and came in fourth in MVP voting. He led the Magic to a 42-40 record and a third consecutive postseason berth under head coach Doc Rivers, but Orlando hadn’t advanced in either of the first two.

The future Hall of Famer averaged 36.3 points per game through the series’ first four games to build a 3-1 lead over the Chauncey Billups and Ben Wallace-led Pistons. Under that season’s new format, though, the Magic had more work to do.

“You know how media is,” McGrady said on Monday of the moment over two decades ago. “You can’t find a video of me actually saying that.”

The Magic lost the next three games, with McGrady’s scoring average down to 25.6 during that stretch. The Pistons advanced, and would eventually be swept by the New Jersey Nets in the Eastern Conference finals. They won the championship the following year.

McGrady would lead the NBA in scoring with 28.0 points per game in 2003-04, but spent just one more season in Central Florida before being traded to the Houston Rockets after the season.

Meanwhile, Orlando hasn’t made it out of the first round of the playoffs since the 2009-10 season. History is on the side of this year’s Magic, though. Per NBC, they are the sixth No. 8 seed to take a 3-1 lead in the first round, with four of the previous five winning the series.

Just don’t ask McGrady if he thinks the job is done yet.