The fact that Vince Carter is 43 years old and is still playing in the NBA is truly remarkable.
If I remember right, 43 is the age my dad stopped playing in his beer softball league because of a bad back. And shoulder. And knees. And ankle. And elbow.
Although, the main difference here might be the fact that Vince Carter does hot yoga and my dad did not.
The 2019-20 NBA season is Vince Carter’s last and that seems about right.
This is a guy who has appeared in more than 1,600 games and has played nearly 50,000 NBA minutes.
Simple math tells us that’s enough to watch Titanic and The Wolf of Wallstreet twice each.
On Wednesday, Carter’s Hawks will travel to Minneapolis to take on the Timberwolves at Target Center. It will be Carter’s 44th and final game against the Timberwolves.
It feels like Carter’s career often gets lost in the shuffle – especially for younger NBA fans. If you’re 13 or younger (thanks to the younger audience for reading this!), you’ve never seen Carter in an All-Star game which seems absolutely wild to me.
Let’s not forget how good and electric Carter was, and how he changed his game throughout his career. Don’t let longevity take away from how great Carter was in his prime.
Often times, we look at per-game averages to judge a player’s career. For Carter, that’s extremely unfair considering the different chapters of his career.
His 16.8 points per game don’t seem super impressive, but had he retired after his age 34 season like a normal human would (nearly 10 seasons ago, lol), that average would have been 22.2 points per game. Quite the difference.
Carter, who is probably the best in-game dunker the game has ever seen, made eight-straight All-Star games from 1999-2007. In 2000-01, just his third season in the league, he averaged 27.6 points per contest. That season, he attempted 5.3 3-pointers per game at a 40.8 percent clip. That’s significant because 3-pointers were not as cool in 2000 as they are now. Carter was 20 years before his time.
When the 2000-01 season ended, “Lady Marmalade” by Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mya and P!nk was the No. 1 song in America. Listen to that on Spotify right now.
It’s crazy how good the guard game was during Carter’s era. Maybe this is just nostalgia talking, but that generation of guards was insane. Carter. Kobe. AI. T-Mac.
Carter was the go-to-guy on those Raptors and Nets teams early in his career. Orlando always seemed like a weird fit and I almost forgot he played for the Suns. But it was during this time when it seemed like Carter realized that his days of being a star were over. And for a lot of players, that’s a wrap. That’s when a career comes to a close. Remember Iverson trying to play for Pistons late in his career? That was weird. It’s never fun watching a star player try to play like a star player when that star player is no longer a star player.
With Carter, it seemed like a quick and easy pivot and he displayed that with the Mavericks, Grizzlies and Kings before signing with Atlanta. He’s in his second season with a Hawks team that isn’t going to make the playoffs. But it’s a role he’s comfortable with as a mentor to the handful of young players Atlanta has on its roster.
While he might be more Vincent than Vinsanity now days, make sure to take in what you can of Carter during his final season. It’s a salute of what he's given the game over the last two-plus decades.