Vince Carter out here posterizing Father Time

Vince Carter is 41 years old.

That is the combined age of Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porzingis. In the league of Large Adult Sons, Carter is Uncle Vince. Maybe he can’t cause as much trouble as he used to, but he can get you in some. One of Carter’s teammates as a rookie way back in 1998 was Sean Marks, currently general manager of the Brooklyn Nets. In 2000, at age 23, he simultaneously reignited and also officially ended the dunk contest. LeBron James, currently the elder superstar statesman of the NBA, was a freshman in high school at the time. The shoes he wore when dunked the iconic Dunk Of Death that summer are now back with a nostalgia hook.

Going on two decades later, Carter can still show a faint glimmer of the high-flying virtuosity that earned him the nickname half-man/half-amazing, which would probably make him more of a basketball minotaur than a unicorn if my understanding of mythological zoology is accurate.

“It shows that your hard work is paying off, even at this age,” Carter wrote in a journal entry published at The Undefeated on Friday. “People ask, ‘Why are you still doing it?’ I can compete, for one. For two, I love this game still. I love competing. I love what the game has to offer. I say all the time that when I’m not willing to put the work in, and don’t enjoy coming to work to play the games and don’t enjoy the highs and lows of it, that is when I walk away.”

On the occasion of his 41st birthday on Jan. 26, the Kings shared a brief video with some of the highlights from this season. And, yes, the top-5 montage includes multiple dunks being thrown down by a guy who has more years in the league than the most recent No. 1 draft pick has years on this earth.

In his 20th NBA season, Carter is playing 16.3 minutes per night for the woeful Sacramento Kings and averaging just 4.6 points per game. That might not seem like a fitting way for hoops royalty to go out until you remember that he’s only playing because he wants to. And because he can still dunk on some champs.

“He still goes between the legs,” Kings rookie De’Aaron Fox told the Sacramento Bee. “He’s not putting his head on the rim but he still can punch it. You still see that rim rattle when he dunks the ball.”

Best of all for anyone who is rooting for Vince or just looking for inspiration for their own ceaseless struggle with aging and/or gravity, Carter sounds like he is planning on playing another season.

“I’m gonna play another year for sure,” he told SB Nation’s Kristian Winfield in December. “I feel good.”