Yeah, I know when McCoy first came to prominence, there were a lot of people making comments about how his style was too hard on tires, and how it wasn't the fastest way around the race track, etc.
Mick Doohan shut them all up in a heartbeat though. I don't remember the exact quote, but his basic point was that all those people didn't know what in the hell they were talking about; that if you wanted to circulate as fast as possible and conserve your tires, you *had* to slide them, at least some of the time.
There's no question that McCoy is a force when the tires "go off". Oddly, I don't recall him being great in the rain, at least not like Kenny Roberts and Alex Barros.