Go back, if you will, to August 2001. Go all the way back to when the Seattle Mariners were on their way to the best baseball season in 90 years, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal were the best of friends and Lindsay Lohan was a Disney pixie. Go so far back that Vince Carter signing a contract extension with the Toronto Raptors was the most important day in the franchise's history.

The man called Air Canada has been largely ground-bound this season and has even spoken of stopping dunking. Ron Turenne/NBAE/Getty

"Frankly I'm speechless," then-Raptors GM Glen Grunwald said at a press conference to announce the new pact. "We couldn't have asked for any better news than this. I don't think words can convey what a great day this is for this franchise, for the city and for me personally to have a person like Vince Carter commit to this franchise. As good as he is a player, he's a better person."

After Carter had lifted the Raptors to unparalleled success both on the court and in the stands and before he had re-signed with the team, the doubters and the naysayers - and there is never a shortage of either group, is there? - confidently predicted that, after his five years in Toronto were up (four years of his rookie contract plus one played under a qualifying offer to allow him to become an unrestricted free agent), Carter would bolt for a bigger market and one that was considerably more … American.

Putting aside for now the fact that one of those oft-rumored stateside destinations was to play for Michael Jordan after he returned to Washington Wizards management (hindsight is fun, isn't it?), the assumption was that after Carter left, the crowds that watched him at the Air Canada Centre would soon follow, with the Raptors potentially joining their fellow 1995 Canadian expansion teams, the Vancouver Grizzlies, in heading south of the border. Remember, it was only months earlier that the Grizzlies has packed up shop in Vancouver in favor of Memphis.

That, to me, is why Friday, when they traded Carter to the New Jersey Nets in a four-player deal, should be considered one of the best days in Raptors history.

That's not to say that Carter is a horrible player. While there are always Bill Simmons' "Ewing Theory" implications to be considered, in the short term, it's doubtful that the Raptors made themselves a better team by trading away Carter.

It doesn't take any fancy statistics to demonstrate that Carter is no longer the superstar he was when he re-signed with the Raptors - he's averaging just 15.9 points per game - but he still gave the Raptors a go-to player, something they now lack. (If you think that Jalen Rose is that go-to player, I'd suggest checking with Chicago Bulls fans to see how accurate that is.)

The additions of Alonzo Mourning and Aaron Williams improve the Raptors in the middle, where Loren Woods had cooled dramatically after a fast start that was matched by the team as a whole, but by how much? Enough to offset the difference between Carter and Eric Williams (and the other players who will add minutes, including Morris Peterson, an underrated player in my book; and Lamond Murray, who has been the Raptors best player by adjusted plus-minus ratings)?

Those same plus-minus ratings regard Carter as the second most negative influence on the Raptors, trailing only Rose, but he was rated as a star-level player a year ago. Could Carter have gone that far downhill, that fast?

That's the question the New Jersey Nets hope to answer. There's no doubt that Carter makes them a far more formidable offensive team as compared to the journeymen who had manned the shooting guard position this season when Richard Jefferson wasn't playing out of position there, namely Rodney Buford and Ron Mercer. Unless, however, the Nets are planning to go extremely small with Jefferson at power forward, they're incredibly thin in the middle for a possible run this season. And frankly, the options at shooting guard are scarcely better.

(The Nets ought to consider picking up ex-Raptors center Jerome Moiso, waived by Toronto to make room for the newcomers. Neither of his coaches with the Raptors (Kevin O'Neill, Sam Mitchell) seemed to like Moiso at all (an opinion confirmed by his release instead of second-round pick Pape Sow), but he played well as a regular two years ago in New Orleans and had decent per-minute stats in Toronto a year ago.)

Besides simply getting rid of Carter - Raptors.com describes it as ending "the saga that is Vince Carter" - the Raptors get a pair of potentially decent first-round picks, two of the three acquired by the Nets for Kenyon Martin. Raptors.com reports that Toronto will get Philadelphia's first-round pick this year unless the 76ers get one of the top eight picks. The pick is top-five protected the following year and unprotected in 2007. Denver's 2006 first-round pick is less appealing, depending on how the Nuggets fill out the roster, but the protection is unlikely to come into play.

With Carter gone, the Raptors have committed to building around power forward Chris Bosh and point guard Rafer Alston (assuming he never follows through on that retirement threat a few weeks back). The downside is that they still have the guys they got in this trade and Peterson and Rose signed to long-term contracts. GM Rob Babcock will need to hit on their draft picks in the near future to improve the roster.

The more important issue for the Raptors, to me, is this: No one is suggesting the team is going to move. No one is suggesting that basketball in Canada is doomed. As of Monday, Toronto's average attendance was 17,090, above the league average. While some of Carter's trade value was due to the perception that he's a fan favorite - Carter did rank fourth amongst all players in All-Star voting when the first tallies were released last week - many Raptors fans were clearly tired of his injuries and frustrated at his decline from superstar form. The hardscrabble approach of rookie forward Matt Bonner has already won support in Toronto, and the grindstone-type players the Raptors acquired in the trade have the opportunity to earn that support (if Mourning ever plays in Toronto, something that's looking somewhat unlikely at the moment).

Since the Grizzlies departure, the Raptors have also done a good job of marketing themselves as Canada's team, which doesn't help ticket sales but does improve promotional opportunities and broadcast success.

The Raptors may have lost Vince Carter today, but they'll easily survive that loss. That's the best news of all.

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