The road that was chosen
Bryant spent his career in one town, but Carter became a wise veteran without a real home
Two days after he died, Kobe Bryant still hung over the game, over the NBA. The Raptors, one of the most mentally tough groups in the league, asked not to field Kobe questions until after their game. When the Raptors had to play in San Antonio hours after the crash Sunday, even Kyle Lowry couldn’t warm up; he tried and retreated to the locker room, overcome.
And on this day, at the morning shootaround, Vince Carter’s young teammates sang “Happy Birthday” to him two days after he turned 43, because nobody wanted to celebrate anything the day Kobe, his daughter Gianna and seven others died in a helicopter crash.
“(Kobe) knew everybody’s name,” said Alex McKechnie, Toronto’s vice-president of player health and performance, who held a similar job with the Kobeera Lakers for years. “Families would sit and wait in the hallway (and) he would come out and say hello to (my wife) Sandy and Danielle, my daughter, it was amazing. He was like that with everybody. That was Kobe.
“His drive for perfection, his ability to drive other players was second to none, it was quite amazing. Some players had difficult time dealing with that, let’s be honest about it, but that’s what he was striving for: perfection every single day.”
Meanwhile, nobody went further back with Kobe than Vince, who was on the same legendary AAU team in Paterson, N.J., in 1994, along with future NBA players Richard (Rip) Hamilton and Tim Thomas. Vince remembers.
“His ability to shoot, obviously, how tall he was, his ability to pass, make plays,” Carter said. “I remember he was shooting half-court shots. He wasn’t making them all, but the confidence to come on an AAU team that was that good and still feel like (he) could shoot half-court shots, in games. And he’d make a few. So you were in awe of his range and his ability, and his confidence was second to none.”
Left unsaid was how Kobe was Carter’s contemporary, a genuine career measuring stick, and the difference in their habits and mindset has played out over 20 years of basketball. Kobe the
killer, driven beyond reason, bound to Los Angeles from beginning to end.
And Vince took a different path. He never chased perfection, not really; he has played for seven teams since leaving Toronto, morphing eventually into a journeyman and wise old veteran. A few years ago he began telling people that he had decided to try stretching regularly.
On this night, with Toronto in control all the way, Vince caught the ball late in the first quarter and was cheered, and was cheered after his turnaround jumper went in. The Raptors showed a commemorative video, and Vince got a standing ovation. He didn’t get too emotional, he said, because he’s trying to save it for the next, final visit.
He hit a rainbow step-back three after that, and people gasped. He hit another one, and scored again. He scored a quick 10 points in six minutes, and was applauded as he sat down. He didn’t score again; he’s low on gas, at 43. He’s been embraced here before, more over the years. It took time.
Kobe’s death, meanwhile, has shaken a lot of people in the league; it’s a sudden reminder of mortality. Vince said he cried when he found out, but any examination of himself through the Kobe lens is muted, at least publicly. But it allows you to wonder what could have been. Not as a player: Vince was just wired differently from Kobe, and there was no changing that.
Imagine, though, if he had stayed. Kobe’s love affair with L.A. was tumultuous, but lasted more than 20 years; Vince still inspires an incredible reaction here, 14 years after he was traded. He was this city’s first real basketball love, and basketball heartbreak. He was asked if he ever wondered about staying somewhere longer than he did.
“Of course,” said Carter, who played with Dirk Nowitzki, who spent his whole career in Dallas. “I mean, I think of the connection to those six years, and just like, man, 20 years of that? ... When I come back here, people say, ‘Well you’re home.’ I’m not from here, but it’s like you’re back home, even though I was born in Daytona Beach, Florida.”
It was his only real basketball home. The New Jersey Nets have moved to Brooklyn since he played there. There was Orlando, Phoenix, and a last relevant tour in Dallas before the end-of-the-road stops in Memphis, Sacramento, and now Atlanta. Vince said the Hawks point out different points of interest in different cities, and he has one here. Not a retired jersey, or anything you can see; instead, the banner from the arena’s opening.
“They look up at the rafters — see that (championship) banner here and the other one over there too from when the arena opened,” Carter said. “I was a part of that.”
He talked about how he scored the first two points in this arena — a two-handed reverse alley-oop from Charles Oakley. He seemed proud.
“The dunk contest and the rookie-of-the-year stuff, those were great, but I can walk in here and see that and think about when this place opened and I got the first basket,” Carter said. “It was surreal at that moment, and that’s forever etched in the history of this building and that’s special. I bet that catches people off guard — like he’s accomplished a lot of things, but that’s important to me, and not a lot of guys can say that.”
Vince Carter is in his 22nd and final season, and it all feels smaller than it should. Imagine if he had spent 10 years here, which was essentially his prime as a major player; imagine if the mutual antagonism and disappointment could have been repaired. He wouldn’t have been Kobe; he wouldn’t have stayed forever. Still, imagine how much stronger the bond could have been.
But Vince chose a different path. And it’s almost done.