Should the throwout bearing have play?

I've been having trouble with my clutch not releasing fully. I can repeatedly grind into reverse.

Now I have the transmission off and I noticed that I can pull the throwout bearing appart by 1/16" and push it back together by grabbing the plate that rests on the release lever and grabbing the collar that touches the pressure plate fingers.

Could this be my cause? I thought that the slave cylinder was "self adjusting" to take up slack like this.

I just want to be sure that I find one possible cause before I button it back up. The problem wasn't so bad with the car cold but got really annoying with the car hot so I suspect the problem is something subtle.

Thank you for any suggestions!

Upon removing the rest of the clutch, I've found nothing terribly obvious but I don't know what is normal and what isn't.

The flywheel and pressure plate are flat, not warped. You can still see the grooves but the surfaces are polished flat. It is more of a darkness pattern in the metal. In a few places on the flywheel and pressure plate, you can see spots that look like they may have been high spots that were worn down. They are perfectly flat though.

The clutch disk still shows the diagonal grooves but they are not even 1/16" deep. I don't know how deep they started out. There is no evidence of wear around the outside edge of the clutch disk (I was thinking maybe the transmission was not lined up or the input shaft had play causing the outside edge to drag). The clutch disk also shows wear spots but it is perfectly flat as well and not warped. There are also a few areas where there are what I would call heat fractures. It is 1/4" thick.

So I guess I'd call that all normal wear. Still not seeing a smoking gun that would have caused a dragging clutch.

In any event, it's all getting replaced with a metalman G60/VR6 kit. I was just hoping to find the problem and know what it was because if it is a matter of how everything lines up going back together, and not a part defect, I want to know what to look out for.