Retired - Retired after 2020 season
- Birthdate: 01/26/1977
- Drafted (NBA): 5th pick, 1998
- Pre-draft team: North Carolina
- Country: USA
- Hand: Right
- Agent: -
June 29, 2017
Vince Carter
SG/SF, 6’6, 220lbs, 40 years old, 19 years of experience
Remarkably capable for his age, and it’s a true testament to how transcendent his athleticism was that he still retains so much of it in his forties. Yet the nostalgia and the relatively good aging ought not obscure the fact that his impact is waning. Vince shoots the three well still, hitting 37.8% this past season, and his durability was remarkable, yet the lateral speed is going, as is the ability to get to the rim. And although he can still shoot, he also keeps taking heat checks, which can undermine it a bit. Still, Carter had some vital veteran contributions, and may still have some more in him. It would be nice to see him make a run at Robert Parish's record.
Player Plan: Expiring $4,264,057 salary. The longevity is fun, but Vince is a minimum salary player at this point.
April 5, 2017
[...] Or take Serge Ibaka, never a post-offense player but a prolific offensive rebounder who has forgone that skill in favour of being a high volume, high efficiency three-point shooter. His naturally slender frame did not lend itself to post muscle. But his long strong, co-ordination and high release made him suitable for the perimeter, where he now does much of his offensive work. Ibaka is taking four threes a game and hitting them at 40% - this, it should be remembered, was a number it was once thought even for a prime Vince Carter.
February 26, 2012
Despite his status as the greatest ever, and his 20.2ppg average on the season to that point, Michael Jordan was not voted in as a starter to the game. The fans were given an opportunity to say if they wanted Jordan to start, and they didn’t. That should have been the end of it.
But it soon transpired that, voting system aside, deciding who started wasn’t the fans’ decision after all. Iverson, voted in as a starting guard, was the first to magnanimously offer to give up his starting spot for Jordan, and leading Eastern conference votegetter Tracy McGrady soon followed with the same. Jordan declined both; inevitably, attention turned to the third guy-who-wasn’t-a-big-man, Vince Carter, to make a similar offer.
He didn’t. Despite only playing 15 games in the season to that point, Carter nonetheless recorded the third-most votes of anyone in the league, 360,000 before the next Eastern forward (Jermaine O’Neal), only 15,000 behind his cousin McGrady for the overall Eastern lead, and 218,000 ahead of Jordan. Fans voted for Vince knowing that he had barely played, because they wanted to see him start anyway. More so than Jordan, it seemed.
The voting system is not truly representative of consensus. After all, this was the year that Yao tallied the fourth-most votes in the league, starting ahead of a prime Shaq, despite having less than half of his averages and barely a trillionth of his legacy, all because the Chinese made it so. Nevertheless, it represents something. If it wasn’t regarded an honor, it wouldn’t matter that Jordan wasn’t starting.
However, not only did Vince not offer his place, but he also came out and said that he wasn’t going to offer it, that he felt doing so would be letting down all the people who voted for him. Even if you read between the lines of that logic, and conclude that Vince didn’t give up his starting spot because he simply didn’t want to, that is fair enough. He didn’t have to do anything.
That is, not until everyone told him otherwise. After Iverson and McGrady’s gestures, and in light of his season to date, the media pile-on of Carter began. And with an about an hour to go until the tip-off, a totally shocking thing happened — the pressure took and Vince offered Jordan his starting spot, presumably upon pain of death. And Jordan — who had said all the perfectly correct things in declining his two previous offers — was now somehow willing to accept.
June 9, 2011
[...] The choice of Jackson over the other candidates was deliberate, and only slightly motivated by cost. Andre Iguodala is better at small forward, ball dominant, not nearly as good of a shooter as he thinks he is, and not nearly the calibre of half-court creator he so desperately wants to be.26 A backcourt of Derrick Rose and Monta Ellis cannot stop anybody, and while it would thrive in the open court, it effectively mitigates itself in the half court. J.R. Smith can't be trusted, and was once traded by the Bulls for Adrian Griffin and Aaron Gray, which is no endorsement at all. Anthony Parker is no longer starting calibre. Michael Heisley has seemingly made the cost of acquiring O.J. Mayo unnecessarily prohibitive, particularly for one so average. Jason Richardson no longer wants to dribble, defend, or do anything much to get open without the ball. Vince Carter is emphatically done. Denver should (or ought) match a full MLE deal to Arron Afflalo. Courtney Lee won't come for anything less than Omer Asik, which is not a deal worth making. The Daniel Gibson, Jamal Crawford and Leandro Barbosa-types would be most useful, but only as hard-to-acquire backups. And Richard Hamilton is.......well, no.