Vince in T.O.

Coming off two very encouraging wins over two tough teams, the Raptors sweated out a 104-101 win over the lowly Hawks.

We really got away with this one. Kyle and Kawhi played together for the first time in a month, and I think it kind of showed early on. Hopefully both guys will stay healthy the rest of the way and get in more reps together before the playoffs.

The game itself wasn't much, though I enjoyed how we came through in the final stretch against a young team that didn't know what to do with a lead against the best team in the NBA.

Watch this sequence. Steal, screen, passes (everyone touches the ball)  and slam.

But for me, and perhaps other long-time Raptors fans, this was more about what could have been Vince Carter's final visit to Toronto. I'll just reminisce about Vince here.

Standing O

When Vince entered the game off the bench in the first quarter, the crowd gave him a standing O.

 

 

We all know the expression, "Time heals all wounds." And it has been a little over 14 years since we shipped him to Jersey.

 

(You can read this fascinating account of the trade and how subsequent deals ended up with, of all players, Luke Ridnour.)



 

I was back home and serving in the Korean military when the deal happened. I had to read about the trade and the circumstances surrounding it well after the fact. That's why I wasn't nearly angry with his departure as fans who followed and witnessed the saga in real time as it evolved.

 

My emotion was that of a disappointment: that we lost such a great player still in his prime. Though he's American, Vince was always synonymous with basketball in Canada, not just in Toronto.

 

I watched Vince from his rookie season. Sure, he could fly and dunk and all. But I was really impressed with the way he improved his overall offensive game over the early years of his career. He couldn't make a 3 to save his life as a rookie, but he came back the next year and shot over 40 percent from downtown (up from 28.8 percent the year before). Then in his third season, he increased both his attempts, makes and percentage from 3-point range.

 

Along with the season Kawhi is having now, Vince's 2000-2001 season ranks right up there as one of the best individual Raptor seasons ever. Averaged a career-best 27.6 ppg (never matched that the rest of his career), was named to the All-NBA 2nd Team,  and more importantly, took us to within a bucket of the Eastern Conference Finals.

 

That's the season when Carter famously/infamously attended his graduation ceremony at UNC on the day of Game 7 vs. the Sixers in the Eastern semis.

 

That was an outrageous series, with Carter and AI trading 50 points. I couldn't believe how loud it was at the good ol' ACC then, just watching from TV. It was a different kind of "loud." Even though I wasn't inside the arena, maybe there was a bit of defiance, a collective chip on the shoulder from the crowd who had never seen a Raptor team that good and who still longed for respect from the rest of the league, and no shortage of pride that we had a budding superstar on our hand.

 

Anyway, Vince missed a turnaround jumper from the corner that would have sent us to the Eastern Finals against the Bucks. For years, I've been telling anyone who'd listen that we matched up far better against the Bucks than the Sixers that year, and that we would have won that series in six games. I really believed that. They were top heavy with Ray Allen and Glenn Robinson, but we had more depth and grit up and down the lineup.

 

(I looked up the season series from that year and we were 1-3 in the regular season. But I stand by my point that we would have beaten them in the conference finals.)

 

If you have been clicking on some of the links I've provided in my entires, you'll maybe notice that I rely quite a bit on Sportsnet for Toronto sports content, as opposed to following TSN.ca. (And no, it's not because TSN rejected my internship application back in 2000.)

 

(I had been a devoted reader of the Toronto Star, the newspaper, for more than 2 decades, but they've recently gone subscription based and they're only allowing residents of Canada and the U.S. to sign up. I've never paid for any of those online subscriptions before but I was willing to make an exception for the Star. But they won't let me pay them!)

 

Anyway, I prefer Sportsnet because they have more written content than TSN, which mostly has video clips that are geo-blocked in Korea anyway, and their so-called "columns" aren't as good, I feel. Plus, between my work, family, this blog and my other reading activities, I only have so much time to consume Toronto sports content online.

 

But, BUT... TSN had an interesting item that I want to share here to wrap up this post. Josh Lewenberg interviewed 21 of Vince's former teammates and got them to share some fascinating behind-the-scene stories.

 

The one common thread that sticks out: Vince had some insane dunks in practices that fans never got to see. There are stories about Vince just walking into the gym and doing some 360 dunk without even warming up, etc. And a lot of young guys gush about his leadership and how he took them under his wings and all that.

 

So, if you do have some time (or better that, if you've made it this far), go ahead and have a look.

 

Let me add one last clip of Vince: getting emotional after watching a tribute video at ACC while he was with Memphis.