Carter’s slam dunk put Raptors on NBA map
Toronto was hoops outpost until Vince changed all that at the 2000 all-star game
For the first half-decade of their existence, the Toronto Raptors were little more than an NBA afterthought, a new team few cared about, playing in a city fewer knew about, in a country even fewer had any knowledge of.
They had a goofy dinosaur logo and cavernous ill-suited home and they really weren’t very much.
Then came the league’s 2000 allstar weekend in rainy and dreary Oakland. All of a sudden, in front of the eyes of the basketball world, the Raptors became a thing, basically thanks to Vince Carter.
The party-filled celebration that descends on Toronto starting Friday is here in no small part because of what Carter did more than a decade and a half ago.
“You never thought about Toronto being in its own country or whatever it was,” recalls DeMar DeRozan, now a fervent booster of the city and the franchise but at that point an impressionable 10-year-old fan in Los Angeles. “We just knew Toronto was far. “Vince took it to a whole other level. I think he changed the game, the excitement people wanted to see daily and made Toronto. It was Vince.”
Carter’s 2000 dunk contest exploits have been well and often chronicled and will be celebrated this weekend. Hanging off the rim by his elbow, the behind-the-back-through-the-legs jaw-slackening dunk, the “it’s over” proclamation; it was a seminal moment for the event and for the franchise.
“It changed everything,” Carter said. “I think some people knew who we were, where we were, but it really put Toronto on the map.”
Carter was the first Raptor all-star and his name still synonymous with the weekend and the franchise, despite how long it’s been. With the weekend outside the United States for the first time and in the arena Carter made famous, it will create some wistful memories. And contemporary ones.
“This is how old it is, I remember recording it on a VHS tape and watching it over and over,” DeRozan said. “It gave you an inspiration to want to be in that spotlight, it put basketball in perspective for me, watching your favourite player and the spotlight that it brought.”
Carter’s all-star moments — and notoriety — aren’t limited to that perception-altering Oakland weekend. In 2003, after three years of being the leading vote-getter in fan balloting, Carter famously gave up his starting spot to Michael Jordan, who was making his final all-star appearance. It was seen as a contentious move in some quarters and an overblown non-story in others but again underscored the level of fame Carter had achieved.
But it was the 2000 all-star weekend that put him, and Toronto, on the map.
“It was something I always wanted to do, as much as just being an NBA player . . . when I had the trophy it was a totally different world. Right after holding that trophy up and go- ing into the back . . . life was different.”
There have been contributions to all-star weekends by Raptors over the last 20 years that go beyond Carter and DeRozan.
Chris Bosh appeared in as many all-star games representing Toronto as Carter did — four with each missing a fifth due to injury. Terrence Ross won the 2013 dunk contest, paying homage to Carter by wearing a replica jersey for one dunk.
There were others, they may not have the impact of the first — and in Carter’s case the best — but they did advance the profile of the organization at least a little.
Jason Kapono, in arguably his biggest contribution as a key Raptor free-agent acquisition, defended his championship and won the 2008 three-point shooting contest. Damon Stoudamire, the franchise’s first recognizable star, was the most valuable player in the Rookie-Sophomore challenge in 1996.