Long Live Vinsanity
Never as great as Kobe, Duncan, K.G., etc., the immortal Vince Carter nonetheless inspired a generation of young NBA fans.
Vince Carter recently turned 40, making him the oldest player in the NBA. Along with fellow draft picks, Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce, the three are the only active players to play a full season during the 1990s. To put things into perspective, last season’s Rookie of the Year, Karl Anthony-Towns, was two years old when the trio was selected in the 1998 NBA Draft.
With Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson now enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame — and Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Kevin Garnett retired — Carter, Nowitski, and Pierce represent the final links to the initial post-Jordan generation. The latter pair undeniably achieved more than Carter; Dirk will likely go down as a top-five, all-time power forward, and Pierce’s game-winning moments and championship in Boston long-ago cemented his legacy.
Carter, however, whose nightly highlight reel-worthy moments were far too many to count, seems unfairly cast as a once-great-scorer-turned-journeyman-elder-statesman; someone not worthy of being hailed as one of the greatest players in his generation.
And that’s not right.
I was six years old in 1998 when Michael Jordan won his sixth and final NBA Championship in Chicago. I have no direct memories of the GOAT, other than Space Jam. Instead, I was raised on “the dozen,” the best players A.J. (after Jordan): Shaq, Duncan, Kobe, Iverson, Garnett., Dirk, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Tracy McGrady, and … Carter.
In those first few post-Jordan years, Duncan, Garnett, and Kidd were obviously top-notch players, but their games weren’t yet appreciated by the casual NBA fan. McGrady, Nowitzki, and Nash wouldn’t peak until the latter part of the 2000s, and Pierce and Allen played for basement dwellers.
No, the era belonged to four men: Shaq, Kobe, Iverson, and Vince. And if you were a kid on the playground — unless you were as tall as you were wide — you almost certainly modeled your game after one of the latter three.
O’Neal, Duncan, and Bryant won 14 NBA Championships in total. Nowitzki and Garnett each won MVPs and a league title. Nash and Kidd spent a decade swapping the NBA’s “Best Point-Guard Alive” title; the former winning two MVPs, the latter winning it all in 2011 with Dirk in Dallas. Pierce and Allen were perennial All-Stars before winning a ring in Boston, and Allen went on to win another championship in Miami. A.I. won the 2001 MVP Award and a valiant Finals run.
Which leaves us with McGrady and Carter.
After playing in Carter’s spotlight for three years in Toronto, T-Mac blossomed into the league’s best scorer during stints in Orlando and Houston. And while neither his longevity nor durability ever matched Carter’s, McGracy undoubtedly enjoyed more time basking in the spotlight — mostly because Carter’s career-defining moments were not attached to MVPs or championships.
In the 2000 Slam Dunk Contest, Carter displayed one of the best performances in history of the competition, singlehandedly rivaling the iconic show put on by Jordan and Dominique Wilkins in the 1980s. At just 23 years old, it was widely believed to be his NBA coming-out party.
The following season, Carter took the Toronto Raptors to the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Facing off against the Philadelphia Sixers, Carter went toe-to-toe with league MVP Iverson.
- Game 1: Iverson 36 points, Carter 35 points
- Game 2: Iverson 54 points, Carter 28 points
- Game 3: Carter 50 points, Iverson 23 points
- Game 4: Iverson 30 points, Carter 25 points
- Game 5: Iverson 52 points, Carter 16 points
- Game 6: Carter 39 points, Iverson 20 points
In Game 7, with each star having score “just” 20 points, the Sixers held an 88–87 lead with :02 left on the clock. Carter received the Raptors inbound, got his defender on a pump-fake, and put up a great look that rimmed out. While Iverson went on to face the Los Angeles Lakers, everyone assumed that Carter would be back, the series loss just another stepping stone to his eventually ascension to league-elite status.
Instead, the loss was Carter’s peak.
In the following three season, Carter’s scoring dropped from 27.6 points per game in 2001 to 24.7, 20.6, and 22.5. During that period, Toronto failed to make the playoffs, and after discord with the team’s management, Carter was traded to the New Jersey Nets at what should have been the start of his prime (age 28).
Despite being paired with Kidd and Richard Jefferson, though, Carter and the Nets never got beyond the second round of the postseason. Following five unsuccessful years in New Jersey — despite Carter averaging 23.6/5.8/4.7 —he was suddenly 33 years old and on the downside.
The remainder of Carter’s career has seen stops in Orlando, Phoenix, Dallas, and now Memphis, where he’s found success as a veteran role player, averaging 11.2 points on 41.3 percent shooting in just over 24 minutes per game. Not too shabby for an old guy.
It’s hard to define the legacy of someone like Carter. Despite his early reputation as a malcontent, he now sports one of the finest reputations in the game, a consummate professional. It’s also not unfair to wonder whether Carter was something of a victim of circumstance, playing in an era which saw three of the top 12 players ever in Kobe, Duncan, and Shaq; two of the top-30 in Garnett and Nowitzki; and three of the top 50 in Iverson, Kidd, and Nash. It’s no shame not being better than that dozen, but it’s not entirely fair to diminish just how good and, for a short time, anyway, how dominant a player he was.
No, Carter never won a title. He never won an MVP Award, either. He was never chosen as an All-NBA First Teamer. And he never got beyond the second round of the playoffs. But he was the “Most Exciting Player to Watch for a three-year period, at least.
About four or five years ago, when Lob City became a thing and Sportscenter’s nightly top-ten was littered with Blake Griffin’s posterizing jams, I vaguely remember NBA pundits having an on-going discussion about whether or not Griffin was the best in-game dunker of all-time. When they took it one step further, putting Griffin against peak-Carter, though, that felt like a bridge too far. Griffin’s exploits undoubtedly justifies a place near the top of any dunker rankings, but over Carter? Just no. Do we not remember this?
In the end, Carter will probably be remembered as a really good, and sometimes great NBA player whose star burned brightly for too short a time. Not the scorer that Kobe or McGrady were. Certainly not A.I, the likes of whom had never been seen before and never will be again. But with all due respect to McGrady’s offensive prowess, Allen’s shooting, or Pierce’s ability to take over a game, Carter’s jaw-dropping ceiling just might have eclipsed them all.
Forget being like Mike; for a generation of kids born in the early ’90s, we only wanted to be like Vince. And after 21 seasons in the Associations, that’s a legacy no one can take away from him.
