One Final Game: The last great performance for NBA legends

One Final Game: Vince Carter

Date: March 4th, 2019 AND March 11th, 2020

Our list concludes with Vince Carter, whose youth was marked by insane feats of athleticism and whose “old age” saw him reinvent himself as a veteran mentor and role player. Years after his days as a regular starter ended Carter was making his way around the league continuing to survive, and thrive, in small roles as the consummate professional.

His final act was with the Atlanta Hawks, the sage veteran on a team led by young guns like Trae Youg and Kevin Huerter. Near the end of the 2018-19 season, Carter’s penultimate one, he came in off the bench against the Miami Heat and had himself one last big game.

Carter got up 14 shots, the most on the team, and scored 21 points by hitting 7 of his 11 3-pointers. That’s right, 100 percent of his point came from behind the arc, another wild development for the gunner formed from the body of perhaps the greatest dunker in NBA history.

For our final player we’re going to acknowledge one final game, a bonus one, because of the purely bizarre and, truly, final nature of it. Carter’s last season was 2019-20, the season upended by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most memorable nights in NBA history was the Wednesday night when Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 and the NBA eventually suspended the season.

On that evening, the Atlanta Hawks were playing a game against the New York Knicks when the NBA made its announcement to suspend the season. They elected to let current games continue, so the Hawks and Knicks were actively playing when someone on the Hawks became aware of the announcement.

The game, which had gone to overtime, was put out of reach late by the Knicks, and the Atlanta crowd, tracking the state of the NBA and the world from their phones, began chanting “we want Vince!” Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce realized that with the season being suspended this could be Vince Carter’s last game, and so he put Vince back in with 19 seconds to go.

Carter was effectively forced to take the shot, with Trae Youg feeding him the ball multiple times until Carter gunned a 3-pointer. It went in, the last shot of his illustrious career, and the entire arena celebrated a magnificent career with him, for a few seconds lifted out of the morass of anxiety and fear from a global pandemic.

Vince Carter. Kobe Bryant. Bill Russell. Stars from across the history of the league have been able to play One Final Game on their literal last game. Others submitted theirs before the end. For each, they were able to muster what was needed to rediscover what made them special one last time.