Vince’s Slow Walk Home

There is a surreal quality to the moment, and it is causing episodes of childlike wonder in grown men and women as they dreamily look forward and shake their heads disbelievingly to themselves.  You’d think a hard edged cynic like myself would be mocking these earnest yobs—yeah let’s get all worked up about winning a game at home in the second round of the playoffs, can’t you see Iverson over there plotting how to do the same thing to us on Sunday—but I’m starting to feel a bit wobbly myself. 

Could it be that the ear-popping altitude of my sky-scraping seat in the Air Canada Centre Sprite Zone is giving me a nice buzz (which may be a partial explanation as to why the folks at Coca Cola unabashedly associate themselves with such wretched sightlines)?  Could it be that I’m suffering from the same lapse in brain function that made me decide to attend this game with the ex-girlfriend that just broke up with me two weeks ago, all in the hopes that I might coax her into some last ditch sex (no dice—I’ll spend a night on her couch, intoxicated and angry after an hour of mindless bickering)? Could it be that I’m feeling a bit of gnawing guilt about the tickets we fleeced for less than face value from a harried father of three as he tried to catch the next train home to the suburbs (I often think of this sad-faced man and wonder if he has forgiven his wife and kids for making him cough up seats to the best game in Toronto Raptors history)?

Actually, this explosion of good will is almost entirely due to Vince Carter, who is putting together a 50 point scoring performance that is so effortless and efficient that it looks disturbingly like half of Philadelphia’s roster is in the pocket of some shady bookie.   He’s burying three pointers at a rate that, if you’re willing to let your mind go there, recalls Michael Jordan’s first half against the Trail Blazers in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals.  When Vince hits his ninth three late in the third quarter to carve the final bits out of the 76ers’ carcass, he thumps his chest as Allen Iverson stands vanquished by his side. The cheers in the ACC build, and one feels the need to stop and double check with some appropriate authority: Are Toronto Raptor fans permitted to feel this giddily triumphalist? 

But forget about the emotional and irrational in the throes of their first taste of glory.  How could any objective basketball fan predict anything but a bright future for this likeable, productive, dynamic star and his young franchise?: Playoff runs, Christmas Day games against the league’s elite, all capped off by a tearful raising of number 15 to the ACC rafters in 2016.  And, this game, this unbelievable performance in Game 3 of the 2001 Eastern Conference semi-finals would be seen as the moment when Vince Carter and the Toronto Raptors truly arrived.

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Going into the 1998 draft, the Raptors were your garden variety third year expansion franchise—owners of a valuable piece or two but still in deep in the process of clearing out the pile of decrepit refuse originally foisted upon them by the rest of the league.  The 1997-98 Raptors happened to be a particularly terrible team, poorly coached, unable to score or defend and completely devoid of entertainment value outside of some intermittent bursts from 18-year-old rookie Tracy McGrady.  Damon Stoudemire, a tough little player who had valiantly served as the face of the franchise and guided the team to whatever category falls just below respectability while sharing the court with a parade of misshapen spare parts (Zan Tabak!), dodgy felons (Alvin Robertson!) and last-legged head cases (Benoit Benjamin?), had been shipped out of town midway through the year after demanding a trade. 

Losing Stoudemire lent a hint of panic to the already ramshackle spectacle that was Raptors basketball at the time.  Attending games during these first years was only fun if you threw out any conventional standards of quality for the product.  In addition to the mostly appalling basketball being played on the court, the Raptors played their games in the Skydome, and those who went regularly well recall the experience: seats not quite facing the right way[1], blasts of nausea-inducing recirculated air, the telltale giant curtain put up behind the temporary stands to fool the rubes into remembering they weren’t in a giant baseball stadium, and the chronic depth perception follies which plagued even the best sightlines, which often left me wondering whether I (a) put in someone else’s contact lenses by mistake or (b) had my $10 cup of skunky Coors Light surreptitiously spiked with PCP.

Being young, idealistic and having seen exactly one professional basketball game live in person prior to 1996 (and that one involved the expansion Miami Heat and the expansion Charlotte Hornets, so….yeah), I was all too happy to throw myself headlong and unconditionally at the third tier talent and outlet mall aesthetics on display.  My father, on the other hand, being more pragmatic and a long-time fan of the slightly more storied Boston Celtics, was less forgiving.  He took me to see the Raptors play the Magic at the end of the 1995-96 season, and we watched glumly as the Raptors were blown out so early that Shaq and Anfernee were seen ordering apps at Alice Fazooli’s[2] at the end of the third quarter.  My Dad, apparently baffled as to why the Raptors frontline of Acie Earl[3], Oliver Miller and Dwayne Whitfield was not quite as dynamic as Bird/McHale/Parish, fired off a scathing letter to the Raptors brass blasting them for waving the white flag against the Magic and the piss-poor nature of their fan experience.  I always like to picture Isiah Thomas at his desk, reading glasses in hand, putting down my Dad’s letter, slamming down his fist and barking to his secretary “That’s it!  Things really need to change around here!”[4]

The sort of trepidation Raptor fans had felt with Stoudemire was never there when Vince was brought in.  He ticked the box for both sophisticated[5]  Raptor fans (he was always a pretty sure bet to score in the NBA) and the fanbase at large (he was a Tar Heel who could dunk).  And Vince only helped smooth his arrival by appearing to us almost fully formed, one of those draft picks that you know is going to work out by the end of the first pre-season game.  He and a rapidly improving McGrady almost managed to drag a still otherwise questionable Raptors roster close to .500 in 1998-99, and by the following year, they were a playoff team. 

It’s odd to say this about a player who caught so much flack for undeservedly getting the most All-Star votes year after year, but I’d argue that Vince was actually somewhat underrated during his peak.  He became so notorious for being disproportionally popular with casual NBA fans, that many people reflexively short-changed his value on the court[6].  Vince’s 2000-01 remains a semi-forgotten great season—27.6 points per game, 41 percent three point shooting and a 25.1 PER that was second best in the league behind peak Shaq.  And despite losing Tracy McGrady through free agency,[7] and having negligible secondary scoring support (when Antonio Davis is your number two option you’re not exactly working with a varied offensive palette), the 2000-01 Raptors were a noticeably better team than their predecessor.

And the attention!  These developments coincided with an unbelievable explosion in exposure, one which grew even more frenzied after Vince won the dunk contest in 2000.  It was a bizarre transition for Raptor fans.  One day, we’re gamely supporting one of the two or three least glamorous teams in the league, and the next every poser, douchebag and man-child across North America is wearing a Raptors jersey.  It may have been worth pointing out at the time that even at the headiest peak of Vinsanity Toronto wasn’t winning enough games to beat out the 8^th best team in the Western Conference.  But if I channel my 2001 self he’d probably counter that by saying yes, maybe, but HOLY SHIT I THINK DENZEL AND LEO ARE BOTH COURTSIDE!  DO YOU THINK THEY HANG OUT?    
 
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It took us a full six days after Game 3 to begin to sour on Vince.  Of course Raptor fans couldn’t enjoy even one lousy offseason feeling uniformly positive about our ascendant team, sort of the way Pittsburgh Pirates fans are gliding through this offseason (this, of course, before they go 80-82 while being deluged by Andrew McCutchen to the Yankees trade rumors).  Vince, who had helped force a Game 7 against the Sixers with a performance almost as heroic as Game 3, had abruptly left the team.  What horrible luck!  What squalid temptation had ensnared our young star?  A gambling binge in Atlantic CIty?  Hookers?  Drugs and alcohol?  Massive quantities of PEDs? 

No, Vince was attending his college graduation ceremony.  I feel compelled to revisit this episode every so often, because I’m almost certain that I will have to explain it repeatedly to my incredulous grandchildren that yes, this was a massive controversy back in the early 21^st Century.

Now let me first acknowledge that I’ve never given Vince a complete pass for this, because as a Canadian, I always fail to understand people who don’t choose the most agreeable and unobtrusive option[8].  Ultimately, it was a self-righteous decision made by a young man who was an age at which men make a lot of self-righteous decisions, a choice that seemed both completely unnecessary and fiercely admirable at the same time.  In other words, sports talk radio gold.

Although strangely novel for a sports controversy, the graduation kerfuffle was, at its core, bullshit.  Of course, one can’t disprove causation in an instance like this, but it’s hard to see how could a one hour flight from Philadelphia to Chapel Hill (either way), taken by an extremely well-travelled professional athlete on a private jet could have had any impact on Vince’s game.[9]  Had Vince drilled that jumper at the end of Game 7, it would have been a dimly remembered footnote or even a positive story of his academic commitment (I just vomited in my mouth imagining the inevitable Rick Reilly column entitled “A Superstar With the Right Priorities”), instead of one of those Meaningless Defining Anecdotes that get repeated 12,000 times and welded to a player for eternity.[10]

The incident put an enormous damper on what should have been an upbeat few months for the Raptors, and the team would never really be the same.  Over the next few years, Vince turned into the typical superstar on a stagnant team.  His game, which seemed set to soar, just seemed to settle at a level just below his very best.  He was undermined by injuries, underwhelming supporting casts and unrelenting demands to take his game to the next level.  Within a year, the team was awful again.  Just like that, full circle.  We may as well have been back at the circus in the Skydome, staring stupidly at that giant fucking curtain.

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It is not easy to defend Vince Carter, because you can’t deny that on some level he wasn’t giving his best.  Unfortunately, as a rhetorical strategy to defend him, it’s foolish to admit this, because once you start parsing the extent and degree to which someone quit you’ve yielded the argument.  I have nuanced theories on hand, but there’s no point in hauling them out—nobody gives a shit if you quit a little instead of a lot.

The germane outcome was that when Vince’s performance dipped alarmingly during those early months in 2004 after making it clear he was unhappy with the direction and leadership of the team, his reputation was cooked.  Vince had been criticized plenty before, but he immediately became the NBA’s premier prima donna, the platonic ideal of the guy who turned his talent on and off at his leisure.  To this day, you still can’t go five feet on the internet without reading an acerbic Vince Carter putdown—to most fans he’s probably still “a once-thrilling blend of size and athleticism who spent most of his career lounging around at the 3-point line catapulting guarded jump shots like a bearded Sam Perkins”.  Hey, that’s a half-truth!  And leave the “Big Smooth” out of this.      

It’s still not entirely clear exactly what happened between the team and Vince in late 2004.  What was actually a fairly conventional superstar-team tiff—you couldn’t find an Olympus-sized abacus big enough to count the number of instances an NBA player has been unhappy that the team is not doing what it needs to do to win and that management is not being completely straight with him—turned into a trade demand (again, common), a lot of losing and allegations of quitting (less common) and, allegedly, a body slam (probably not common at all).

I always thought the Raptors, in Vince’s later years in Toronto, made the counterproductive organizational mistake of focusing on what their star player wasn’t doing, and in the process, overestimated his abilities.  To the Raptors, Vince was a limitless talent who was just a little effort and maturity away from being one of the few best players in the league, not, more realistically, a consistent, All-Star level player who needed the right big pieces around him to succeed.  A shrewd executive would have noted that a lot of Vince’s perceived flaws were basically surface level—he often had bad body language, possessed something of an atypical personality for a star player, and spent a minute or two of every tenth game writhing on the court like an Italian soccer player.  All undoubtedly infuriating to the typical fan, but smart teams work around this sort of stuff.  The Raptors brass just stubbornly kept building everything around Vince, and sat around getting agitated that instead of a different shade of Michael Jordan, they had ended up with a faded copy of Dr. J. 
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The grab bag the Raptors fetched from the Nets for Carter was particularly gruesome[11], even by the historically terrible standards of NBA teams unloading devalued star players.  Both parties managed alright in the aftermath of the trade—Chris Bosh emerged as a worthy successor to Vince as the Raptors’ number one guy and Vince played well for a decent but decidedly second-tier Nets team.  But in a darkly comic twist, both the Raptors and Vince were pretty much irrelevant from 2004 through 2009 save for the times that they were uncomfortably thrown back together.  Coming back to Toronto, Vince would usually somehow channel the rage in the ACC crowd to rouse himself to play at the megastar level he had never consistently scaled as a Raptor (or as a Net). Raptor fans would boo themselves raw for two and a half hours before Vince would sadistically slip us the shiv with a game winning alley-oop or a buzzer-beating three pointer.  And of course, in the 2006-07 playoffs, the only time the Raptors have finished over .500 since the trade, guess who was waiting in the first round of the playoffs to help drop-kick them out the door?

As the Raptors entered an especially depressing phase in the late aughts[12], and with my other favorite teams faring no better[13], I found my sports fandom morphing to that odd place where one ceases rooting for teams and starts rooting for narratives.  I was especially engrossed by the prospect of Vince redeeming himself as Dwight Howard’s second banana on terrific Magic team in 2009-10.  But the Magic, after looking like the best team in the league for a good part of the year and playoffs, flamed out against the Celtics in the Conference Finals, with Vince playing particularly badly during the last few games.  Forget 2004, forget the missed jumper in Game 7 in 2001—this was the crushing moment of Vince’s career.  The Magic were Vince’s only championship quality team—well-coached, with a bunch of regular rotation guys who could shoot from the outside and an unquestioned number one guy who took most of the heat but didn’t eat up too many shots.   But there was no second chance—in a completely mindless trade^[14], the Magic sent Vince to the Suns midway through the following season, where he basically disappeared from sight.   The end seemed near.  His choice to sign with an aging, sure-to-decline Mavericks team in the 2011 offseason was only a marginally more promising development than the sad retirement announcement I was expecting.^[15]

Vince’s stint in Dallas has turned out about as well as one could have hoped.  I may be projecting a bit here, but Vince re-emergence as a valuable bench player in over the past couple of years is a legitimate accomplishment.  Former stars often have a difficult time getting respect for positive work as role players later in their careers—there’s an assumption that it’s no big deal for guys who were great in their 20s to be able to provide valuable second unit duty when they’re 35.  But if it’s so easy, where are most of Vince’s contemporaries?  McGrady was essentially finished before he turned 30.  Rip Hamilton is gone.  Antawn Jamison is half an ass cheek from being pushed off the far end of the Clippers bench.  Paul Pierce is scuffling somewhat in Brooklyn.  Kobe and Dirk are still stars, but those guys are all-timers, clearly above Vince’s station.  Last year, Vince ranked fifth in the league in PER among shooting guards and seventh in win shares, despite playing only 25 minutes a game.  That may speak to some as mostly indictment of the poor depth at shooting guard in today’s NBA, but it is still something. 

What’s also interesting is that Vince now regularly draws extravagant commendation for his professionalism from his fellow players, teammates, owner and coach, the latter of which is especially noteworthy because Rick Carlisle has, at several different points in his coaching career, seemed on the verge of strangling half of his roster with an extension cord.  In fact, the praise has been so lavishly outsized at times[16] that, upon reading some of those quotes, I feel the need to look around to see if there’s a hidden camera or if someone’s about to get a pie in the face.  Within tight NBA circles, Vince Carter, quitter and wasted talent, has become a bona-fide highly respected veteran.[17]  With no championship on the horizon for the Mavs, I’m going to go ahead and count that as redemption.  
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But then there are those who used to love him.

The Mavericks came to Toronto in January, and the vibe felt different from previous Vince visits.  It seemed as if all the media outlets in Toronto had made a collective decision to push the “it’s time to forgive” narrative in their pre-game articles, and when Vince hit the court against the Raptors, the boos were far more scattered than they were even a year or two ago. For the first time since the trade, I could plausibly envision a time in the future when Vince could stand on the court of the ACC and hear (a least predominantly) cheers.  Vince deserves some credit for this—since the trade he’s never lashed out against the fans, and always politely (and somewhat infuriatingly to those disposed to feel perpetually jilted) professed his love for the city of Toronto.  But to be honest, the thaw probably has more to do with Vince’s advanced age and current court presence—it takes a fair amount of commitment to spew bile at a 37-year-old bench player solemnly grinding out his 41 percent from the field. 

Those Raptor fans who are still booing need to start thinking about the 2004 break-up in the broader context of team-town-athlete relationships, as something that, although particularly ugly, was not just some fluky, horrible wrong turn wrought by a petulant superstar and an inept Raptors management team.  From the outset, it was as likely a conclusion to the Vince Carter/Toronto Raptors relationship as any other.  One needs to only look at the Raptors’ brief history for proof. 

Chris Bosh played hard, was a legitimate Top 10 player in the league and made a strangely hilarious video that evinced a potential future in sketch comedy.  Local writers constantly wrote about how refreshingly down to earth and mature Bosh was (unlike that horrible Vince Carter).  But, when Bosh left town at the first opportunity (to co-star in the campiest group masturbation session ever), writers and even then-Raptors GM Brian Colangelo questioned his toughness and commitment, with specific allegations that he had soft-pedalled an injury to preserve himself for free agency.  He was booed to smithereens by Toronto fans when he returned.  Just like Vince.  Just like Stoudemire.  Just like McGrady.  Are Raptor fans are destined to repeat this cycle of rejection and anger forever?  I can’t wait for the 2016-17 season when I can half-heartedly heckle Phoenix Suns’ All-Star centre Jonas Valanciunas. 

I’m not specifically trying to run down my fellow Raptor fans.  This sort of repetitive baloney is almost inevitable in most cases.  Relationships not buttressed by consistent success, or perhaps even a championship or two, are usually doomed to grow inert and sour.  But although the booing of Vince may have served some sort of cathartic or therapeutic purpose in 2005, at some point it became a massive wound that wouldn’t heal because we kept viciously ripping it open once or twice a year.  It all seems especially unnecessary now given the Raptors’ astonishing emergence as an Eastern Conference power.[18]  

The problem is that those exhilarating moments from well over a decade ago are still, to some extent, all Raptor fans have ever had.  We attached ourselves to Vince way too tightly, and those are always the riskiest relationships.  But when a young man has options there’s not much you can do except let him go.  Then, someday, maybe, he can make his way back home again.      

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[1] They must have gotten this idea from the bleachers at Exhibition Stadium.

[2] A Toronto “hotspot” in the early to mid-90s, boosted by the fact that one could often count on seeing various professional sports stars there enjoying an after-game drink and meal.  It slowly and surely lost its hot quotient as people eventually came to the realization that it was basically a mediocre chain restaurant with good proximity to the Skydome.

[3]  Perhaps the most depressing realization of being a Raptor fan is being forced to acknowledge that Acie Earl’s out-of-nowhere 40 point game in a 28 point loss to the Celtics in the dog days of the inaugural 1995-96 season likely still ranks as one of the ten all-time best Raptor moments.

[4] To the Raptors credit, they responded promptly to my Dad’s letter and offered him two free tickets to a game of his choice.  He took me to see the Knicks in 1997.  The Raptors lost by 25 points.  There’s a lesson here somewhere.

[5] Stop laughing.

[6] I had a roommate who refused to refer to Vince as anything other than “Jerry Stackhouse with better hops”.

[7] It’s easy to look back now and fantasize about McGrady re-signing with the Raptors in 2000, assuming that having two stars of such quality would have led to 60 win seasons and championship runs.  Maybe, but it’s worth pointing out that Vince and Tracy never truly meshed during their two years together, with McGrady forced to defer in a way that he clearly bridled against.  In retrospect, perhaps the smartest basketball move would probably have been to promise McGrady the keys to the car and deal Vince at his peak.  That saying, if you went back to suggest this to Glenn Grunwald, you would have to weigh the high probability of getting strung up like a pig in front of Toronto City Hall before making it back into your time machine.      

[8] You know, like habitually apologizing when we’re not sorry, habitually saying thank you when nobody’s done shit for us, and most egregiously, habitually saying excuse me while getting aggressively shouldered in the subway.

[9] Vince went 6-18 from the field.  Allen Iverson went 8-27.  Let’s just assume it was an unusually tightly defended game and skip the highlight clips, as I may be tempted to watch until the end.

[10] The top Meaningless Defining Anecdote of all time is unquestionably that story where Joe Montana points out John Candy from the huddle at Super Bowl XXIII before driving the 49ers down the field for the game winning score. I really wish the equally phlegmatic Neil O’ Donnell had casually pointed out Chris Farley to his teammates before throwing his final interception directly to Larry Brown during Super Bowl XXX, so we could somehow have two symmetrical yet perfectly inconsistent Meaningless Defining Anecdotes.

[11] Eric Williams, Aaron Williams, wasted draft picks and the bill for Alonzo Mourning’s connecting flight to Miami.  If I were on Jeopardy and this was the Final Jeopardy question , I would shake my head mournfully at Alex, forego thousands of dollars, write “Rob Babcock was out of his element!” and walk off the set.

[12] Otherwise known as the Jay Triano era.

[13]  The Blue Jays and Islanders.  Combined, between these two and the Rpators, we’re talking one playoff series win in 20 years.  To call this a barren stretch would be an insult to the Dust Bowl.

[14] The Magic netted Earl Clark, Jason Richardson and the decaying remains of Hedo Turkoglu (who, in a less than one year stint in Toronto, had somehow managed to easily unseat Vince as the most hated Raptor of all time) for Carter, Marcin Gortat, Mickaël Piétrus, a 2011 first-round draft pick, and $3 million cash.  

[15] Yankee fans, Mariano Rivera retiring in front of a full stadium and a national audience is poignant, not sad.  The prospect of Vince Carter retiring in front of two Phoenix beat writers, a janitor, Steve Nash’s mom and an untended houseplant, is sad.

[16] Rick Carlisle: “One of the most knowledgeable players I’ve been around”; Mark Cuban: “Vince brings it every night”; Elton Brand: “Vince executes team defense really well”; Paul O’ Neill: “I never dreamed anything could be so soft and fluffy!"

[17] Now that he is officially a respected veteran, Vince is free to dispense advice to young players about “leaving It all out on the court” and “putting up a tough front”, which would put him up on the Old Players Giving Advice While Ignoring Everything They Represented While They Were Playing Mount Rushmore in between Michael Irvin and Jim Rice.

[18] I’m not sure whether this should be a joke about the Raptors , the Eastern Conference or Rudy Gay.