Atlanta Hawks enter 2019-20 looking to build on young core

(Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
(Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images) /
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Copyright 2019 NBAE (Photo by Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images) /

Storyline No. 3: Half-man, half-historical monument

Vince Carter signed a one-year, $2.6 million contract in August to return to the Atlanta Hawks for what he announced would be his final NBA season.

With the retirement last spring of Dirk Nowitzki, Carter is the NBA’s last active tie to the 20th century. The 1998-99 Rookie of the Year will play in his 22nd NBA season this year, breaking the record he shared with Nowitzki, Robert Parish, former Hawk Kevin Willis and Kevin Garnett.

With Atlanta not likely to be a serious playoff contender this season, Carter’s farewell tour will be on center stage, certainly every time the Hawks go on the road.

He will almost certainly be honored in Toronto and in Brooklyn, the two franchises he spent the most time with in his career, and will be a cause celebre everywhere else the club goes in 2019-20.

Carter will turn 43 in late January, but played in 76 games last season — his highest total since appearing in 81 for the Dallas Mavericks in 2013-14 — and logged 1,330 minutes, averaging 7.4 points and 2.6 rebounds in 17,5 minutes per game as a reserve wing.

He shot 41.9 percent overall and made 38.9 percent on 4.2 3-point attempts a game.

Given only three other players appeared in an age-42 season in NBA history, it’s worth pointing out that Carter was the most productive player that age the NBA has seen.

His 562 points were almost double the 290 posted by the second-place player on the list, Parish. As Carter is the only non-center on the list (Parish, Willis and Dikembe Mutombo are the others), he’s the only player to make a 3-pointer in his age-42 season, as well.

The only players 43 and older to appear in an NBA game are Parish (age-43 season in 1996-97), Willis (an age-44 season consisting of five games in 2006-07) and Nat Hickey, who played in two games for the old Providence Steam Rollers in 1947-48 at age 46.

Carter passed the 25,000-point plateau last season and enters this year 20th on the NBA’s all-time list with 25,430 points — he has a legitimate shot at getting to No. 18 as he can pass Carmelo Anthony (122 points to do so), Alex English (184 points to do so).

Garnett’s total of 26,071 points appears safe in 17th place — Carter would need at least 642 points this season to eclipse that mark, a point total he hasn’t achieved since 2013-14, when he was a mere boy of 37.

Carter is fifth all-time in games played at 1,481 — 23 behind John Stockton, 41 behind Nowitzki and 79 in back of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Parish’s record of 1,611 is out of reach.

It will be a feel-good story to say goodbye to a player who stayed around much, much longer than anyone would have expected, and longer than any non-big man in NBA history.