After an incredible 22-year career spanning four different decades, Vince Carter has officially retired from the NBA. There will never be another like him.
The moment the NBA suspended its season back on March 11th due to the coronavirus pandemic, the whole basketball world knew it: We would never see Vince Carter play in the league again.
Of course, there were plenty of other things to deal with first. Again, we were in the beginning stages of a pandemic, and that comes first, but there was no secret that this meant an end to Carter’s playing career.
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On Vince Carter’s own podcast, Winging It With Vince Carter, he made the announcement that confirmed what we all knew: “I’m officially done playing basketball professionally.”
This puts the cap on one of the most incredible careers we’ve ever seen in NBA history. Vince Carter played 22 seasons, starting with the Toronto Raptors where his thrilling athleticism launched basketball into relevance in the center of the hockey world.
Over the course of his career, he played for not only the Raptors, but the New Jersey Nets, the Orlando Magic, the Phoenix Suns, the Dallas Mavericks, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Sacramento Kings and the Atlanta Hawks.
Carter appeared in parts of four different decades; the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s, and the first three months of the 2020s. In a sport where most players have a window of just a few years to make their impact, Vince Carter’s was long-lasting and his impact will live on long beyond the end of his career.
Vince Carter’s career metamorphosis
When the Toronto Raptors drafted Vince Carter in 1998, he was likely the first player heralded as “the next Michael Jordan“. Jordan had just retired, they both played college ball at North Carolina, and almost nobody other than Jordan could leap out of the gym like Carter.
Of course, Carter wasn’t Jordan, but he was very much his own player. His career arc began as an athletic force, but over time as age set in and his athleticism departed little by little, he became a savvy veteran in every way. No longer able to explode past (or over) every defender, he became a higher-volume spot-up shooter.
He was always a solid 3-point shooter with a career mark of 37.1 percent from behind the arc, but he re-allocated more of his offense to the perimeter as his career went on. Between 1998 and 2009, only 21.9 percent of his field goal attempts came from behind the 3-point line. Between 2010 and 2020, a massive 49.6 percent of his shots were 3-pointers, and from 2014 on that mark was 60.2 percent.
One thing about star athletes; usually they’re the last to know when they lose it. There have been cautionary tales all through NBA history of players who were on top of the world but as their athleticism waned they never adjusted and eventually found themselves unwanted by the league’s teams. Vince Carter’s exceptional career arc and self-examination and willingness to adjust and adapt to both the modern NBA and his own physical limitations are directly tied to his incredible longevity.
Carter wasn’t a perfect star, but his career is unmatched and his unparalleled willingness to adjust should be lauded.