Last December when the Hawks passed through Boston, a reporter asked Atlanta coach Lloyd Pierce the obligatory Vince Carter question. The exact query is lost to the digital wasteland of a broken recorder, but it implied Carter was essentially done evolving as a basketball player. Pierce smiled and suggested the reporter bring that up with Vince.
Vince Carter has never stopped evolving
As Carter has evolved throughout every stage of his career, the traits that made him a phenomenon still shine through.
Carter never stopped evolving. Over the course of more than two decades in the NBA, Carter has gone through several permutations: rim-attacking superstar, then perimeter scorer, then gracefully aging vet. Each period is worth savoring.
Carter came to the NBA as a high-flying lead guard of the Michael Jordan lineage. While his superstar years were star-crossed and occasionally controversial, he still carried that mantle better than most.
Following a Rookie of the Year campaign with the Raptors at the turn of the last century, Carter became a 10-time all-star and a two-time All-NBA performer with Toronto and New Jersey. If that was all Carter accomplished, he would have had a fantastic career. He had much more to give, however, beginning with his new life as an efficient perimeter scorer with Orlando, Phoenix, and Dallas.
Viewed through a narrow championship-or-bust lens, Carter was a superstar who never won a title and a journeyman scorer on teams that were never quite good enough. It’s his final act — passing through Memphis, Sacramento, and Atlanta — that sets him apart from his peers.
At age 41, and playing in his 21st NBA season, Carter averaged seven points a game on 38 percent shooting from behind the arc for the baby Hawks last season. He appeared in 76 games, including nine starts, and held down a rotation-worthy 17 minutes a night throughout the season. This was no nostalgia trip. The man could still play. Rather than riding a farewell tour, Carter’s performance practically demanded one more year.
With word breaking that Carter will return to the Hawks for a record-setting 22nd season, it’s tempting to contrast his long, sweet goodbye with the painfully abrupt endings handed down to Carmelo Anthony and Jeremy Lin. Yet, Carter’s efforts deserve praise on their own merit.
The remarkable thing about Carter’s work into his 40s is how he has managed to maintain his body and some degree of the bounce that once made him famous. While his Half Man, Half-Amazing days are long gone, Carter can still get on up to throw one down on some unsuspecting pup.
Those moments are to be cherished, especially by those of us old enough to remember his whole career from Florida prep star, to Carolina blue blood, to dunk contest hero. What the highlights and viral clips don’t show is the work it took to maintain his athleticism. What you learn in your 40s is not that you can’t do things you used to be able to do, but that it’s a lot harder to even try. As Dirk Nowitzki has noted, he used to spend hours shooting around, and then it took hours just to get ready to shoot.
Carter hasn’t defied the effects of time so much as he has resisted its gravitational pull. He’s done so artfully, slithering in on the baseline for a follow-up slam when no one bothers to block the old man out, or pulling up just a fraction shorter than he used to for a jumper. You don’t have to remind the kids today that Carter was a great athlete because he’s still fluid enough to recall those days in the present.
Carter was always one of the most aesthetically pleasing players in the game. He had the hops, of course, but he also possesses remarkable body control and exquisite timing. His game presented a wonderful dichotomy between his liquid spinning turnaround jumper and his ferocious aerial flights.
That he has maintained some semblance of that beautiful game into his 40s is a damn miracle. Father Time may be undefeated, but for one more year Vince Carter can still put him on a poster like poor Frederic Weis.
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