Even though Vince Carter played only a short time in Canada, his impact on Canadian basketball is still going strong.
Those kids who watched him play in Toronto, who dreamed of wearing a jersey with a dinosaur on their chest, who maybe didn’t realize yet that no matter how hard they practised at school or in the park would never dunk like Carter, are all grown up now.
They have made Canada’s national team one of the best in the world, the best it’s ever been, and many of them point to the new Hall of Famer as the reason they picked the sport that was never No. 1 in their country.
“Everybody that really plays basketball in this country knows who Vince Carter is,” Raptors forward RJ Barrett said. “What he’s done for the game is huge.”
With 2024 NBA MVP runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and 2023 NBA champion Jamal Murray leading the way, Canada had 10 NBA players on its roster in the Olympics, the most of any country other than the U.S.
Carter spent the first six 1/2 of his NBA-record 22 seasons with the Raptors. He was the 1999 rookie of the year in his first season and an all-star and the slam dunk champion in his second, when Toronto made the playoffs for the first time.
He also won a gold medal during the summer of 2000, when his dunk over France’s Frederic Weis became one of the biggest highlights in Olympic basketball history, and a U.S. team with NBA players had still never been beaten.
Fast forward to last year, when Canada not only won bronze for its first men’s basketball medal in the World Cup of Basketball, but did it by beating the U.S. in the third-place game.
The Canadians had gone from watching Carter play to playing like Carter.
“You’re seeing a lot of kids — I was one of them — who went into their backyards and tried to emulate what he did on the court,” said Kelly Olynyk, who also plays for the Raptors. “That effect is huge.”
The NBA was no sure thing to succeed in Canada, where hockey is king, when the Raptors began play as an expansion team in 1995. In fact, the Vancouver Grizzlies, the other team to debut that season, lasted only six seasons north of the border before moving to Memphis.
But after three straight losing seasons to begin their existence, the Raptors acquired the rights to Carter at the 1998 NBA draft. They finished just four games under .500 in his first season, then reached the playoffs for the first time in his second.
Carter looks back at his time in Toronto, where he had veterans such as Charles Oakley as teammates, as the place he learned the habits that would help him become the only player in NBA history to play in four decades.
“I had a great support system. I had veterans and I was willing to ask questions,” Carter said Saturday at a news conference to discuss his induction Sunday into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “I was willing to ask questions because I wanted to learn.”
WATCH l Carter’s iconic between-the-legs dunk in 2000 NBA Slam Dunk Contest:
In his third attempt of the 2000 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, Raptors’ Vince Carter all but eliminates the competition with his iconic between-the-legs dunk.
Many of the core players on the Canadian team that reached the quarterfinals in Paris were too young to remember watching Carter, though players who were in the NBA earlier such as Olynyk, Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph may have.
“A lot of my friends and even some older people, we wanted to play basketball so much because of the Raptors and Vince and the excitement it brought,” Olynyk said. “Now you’re seeing that my age group now have kids, and they’re putting their kids into basketball because they were basketball fans. Now the whole effect is multigenerational.”
Though there was anger from the Raptors and their fans toward Carter after he pushed to be traded, things have been soothed now. The team will retire his jersey this season and recently unveiled a revitalized Vince Carter Court at a park in Toronto.
“I think it’s really special, very special for him that he’s going to be honoured in the Hall of Fame,” said Nets coach Jordi Fernandez, who coached Canada’s national team, “and very special for Canadian basketball that they could enjoy such a great player and watch him play in the NBA for a long time.”
Carter was enshrined Sunday night in Springfield, Mass., as part of a 13-member class that also included Chauncey Billups and the late Jerry West, who made history by becoming the first three-time inductee.
Even as he prepared to call it quits in 2020 at 43, Carter was having trouble using the word “retire.” That changed, he said, after a conversation with Kobe Bryant during his final season in which Bryant assured him that life after playing was wonderful. Shortly after, Carter came to terms saying he was retiring.
“Because Kobe Bryant allowed me to see it was OK,” Carter said.
Carter played for eight teams in his career, which he said included 261 teammates. It started as the high-flying phenom in Toronto, where he joined his cousin and now fellow Hall of Famer, Tracy McGrady. It was only shortly before that they learned they were related, and Carter said when McGrady called to tell him that news, he said: “Cuz, I’m going to make sure the Raptors draft you. I got you.”
“Here we are today,” Carter added.
His dunks, whether in slam dunk contests, Olympics or just regular-season games, made Carter must-see TV early in his career. He relished remaining a productive player many teams and many years later, when he was no longer quite the high flyer.
He thanked the fans who watched him for all the years, both the ones who cheered and the ones who booed.
“Man, it’s been an honour to fly in arenas for your entertainment,” Carter said.