University of North Carolina Athletics
Vince Carter Is Earning Respect In The NBA
February 24, 2000 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 24, 2000
By Robert Peele
Guest Columnist
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - It is a Wednesday night in New York, and the crowd at Madison Square Garden is proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Vince Carter is no Michael Jordan.
They are cheering him during the player introductions.
Jordan, of course, would have been booed loud and long, and would have taken special relish in carving up the rival Knicks in front of their verbose, rowdy fans. But on this night, less than two weeks after Carter's spectacular performance in the dunk contest punctuated the NBA's first All-Star Weekend of the new millennium, these New York fans are feeling nothing if not hospitable towards the ex-Tar Heel.
As the game begins, Carter seems less intent on putting on a show for the friendly Garden crowd than he is on fulfilling that most nebulous of basketball tasks, "playing within himself." It's an important game for the Raptors, who are fighting for their first playoff appearance in franchise history, and Vince appears more concerned with getting good looks for his teammates. He dishes out five assists in the first quarter, shooting only when plays have been called for him and once on a near-impossible three-pointer he makes while falling away from the basket as the shot clock expires.
The crowd finally gets its wish for showtime in the second quarter, as Vince throws down a nasty one-handed dunk off a pass from Tracy McGrady to put the Raptors up by seven. The Knicks then proceed to make a run while Carter rests on the bench late in the quarter, and take a five-point halftime lead.
The third quarter belongs to Vince. He scores fifteen points, almost all of them on pull-up jumpers in which he appears to be falling away from the basket until one realizes that the defender -- either Latrell Sprewell or Larry Johnson -- is backpedaling so much trying to guard Carter that it makes his vertical elevation seem like a fall-away. The Raptors take the lead on the strength of Carter's outburst. In the fourth quarter, the boos finally rain down on Carter as he draws foul after foul on the Knicks, staving off any hopes of a New York comeback.
More than winning dunk contests, amassing astronomical All-Star vote totals, or even the Letterman appearance he taped the day before, perhaps the truest sign of Carter's NBA stardom is the respect he's getting from the referees, almost unheard of for a second-year player. Carter manages to simultaneously oblige and taunt the crowd one last time with a drive and thunderous slam to put the game away at the two-minute mark, and the Raptors end up winning by 11 points. Vince, playing within himself, has finished with 33 points, nine rebounds and nine assists, just a carom and a dish away from his first career triple-double.
He closes out his whirlwind visit to New York with a television interview at mid-court that lasts until long after the stands have emptied. Carter, smiling and patient throughout the interview, certainly seems to understand what Jordan knew better than anyone -- that being a superstar is a 24-hour-a-day job. And if Carter needs reminding, he can check out the newsstand on his way out of town, where he appears on the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated.
Of course Carter is just the latest of many to wear what has become the "Don't Call Me the Next Jordan, Please" crown. Was it really all the way back in 1994 when Grant Hill was being asked to fill the void during Jordan's fling with baseball? Has it been five years since Jerry Stackhouse preceded Carter as the man carrying the extra pressure of being a high-flying ex-Carolina player, like Jordan? Have we passed by Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant already?
The answer is that The Question of who will be the next Jordan is no longer being asked (not even of Iverson, whose nickname is The Answer). The All-Star game proved that the NBA does not lack for exciting young players, including all the hopefuls listed above as well as the likes of Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Rasheed Wallace -- an insurgence of youth that makes Shaquille O' Neal and Alonzo Mourning seem like elder statesmen.
Some have already taken their turn at being put through the media wringer by which Carter is now being squeezed. The common denominator for all of these players is simple: until one of them carries his team to an NBA Championship -- and this includes Duncan, whose title is somewhat tainted, fairly or not, by last year's strike-shortened season -- they will in the minds of most fans be an amalgam of gaudy statistics and SportsCenter highlights. Carter, despite the fact that many of his highlights surpass Jordan's famous aerial feats, is no exception.
Where Jordan excelled more than any basketball player -- perhaps any athlete -- in history was that he took in all the hype, all the pressure, all the scrutiny of being the man everyone in the arena had come to see and consistently exceeded those expectations, whether it was the sixth game of the NBA Finals or a road trip in February. And he won, almost always.
At the end of this Wednesday night in New York City, what matters most is that Carter's team won. When the hype machine has cooled back to its normal, everyday merely insane level for Carter -- as opposed to its current level of Vinsanity -- winning will remain the task at hand.
