Sunday, May 20, 2007
When Your Worst Enemy is Your Best Player
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By the time some of you read this, Vince Carter will have scored 80 points over the span of two playoff games, keeping the Nets alive to play another day.
Or, he'll have gone 1-for-12 in the fourth quarter, fumbling away the ball on his final shot like Butterbean trying to eat a greased cantaloupe.
It'll be one of the two, because there's no middle ground with Vince: he's either the best player on the court or the worst example of a pseudo-superstar in the NBA. He's either the Air-apparent, able to hang above the floor for what seems like hours as he sinks a highlight-reel shot, or he's a complimentary player with an all-star's shoe contract.
He's either your best friend, or your worst enemy. And as a Nets fan from the days of 5,000 people in the Meadowlands watching Otis Birdsong pass to Mike Gminski, I miss players that either rock (Buck Williams) or suck (I'm a Nets fan ... we simply don't have time for the litany of counter-comparisons that could fit between these brackets).
In other words, I'm sick of Vince Carter, and it's time for him to leave.
I knew when Carter arrived in New Jersey that the Nets were getting a polarizing figure — a player that had a funny way of pissing everyone off but getting a pass from the locals as long as he produced. It reminded me of when my New Jersey Devils traded for Claude Lemieux, one of the most hated players in hockey history and a guy whose own coaches labeled him a locker room cancer. I watched the guy play with more emotion, grit, and dastardly determination than any other player on the ice, and was enamored with him; No. 22, with "Lemieux" above it, was the first personalized sports jersey I ever owned.
The rest of the league thought he was a bastard; to me, he was a hockey hero.
Same goes for Vince. There were stretches during his time in Jersey when I was a huge Carter mark, defending his game to detractors and believing he could elevate this franchise to its first NBA championship. No offense to Jason Kidd, a true immortal of this game, but Carter's explosive talents convinced me that he was the best pure athlete the franchise has seen since Dr. J.
Delusional? Maybe, but you can be seduced by the charms of a player like Carter. The acrobatics. The flashes of brilliance that seem effortless. And the big, timely plays that superstars make — like the game-tying three-pointer I saw him sink with clicks left on the clock in a game down here in D.C. earlier this season.
The problem is that he never made enough of them. He was eighth in the league in scoring, and first in empty points — those baskets that come during meaningless times of the game, spotlighted by those misses that come during crucial junctures.
Like, for example, his pathetic fourth quarter in Game 4 against Cleveland in this year's Eastern Conference semifinals. He was an inept conduit for the Nets' offense, destroying consistency and halting momentum whenever he could. His timid turnover with 1.2 seconds left in a two-point game — the ball muffed out of bounds as Carter had his back to a double-team — is, as of Game 6, the biggest turning point of the Nets' postseason.
Whenever that postseason ends, so will end this incarnation of the team. Kidd's got his eye on the Lakers, and Kobe's got his eye on Kidd. The notion that Richard Jefferson could be packaged for another superstar (Garnett?) has been floated; so has the notion that the Nets could pull a Washington Nationals-like move, shedding their star salaries and going into the tank until their new home in Brooklyn is ready for them.
Carter? He'll likely opt out of his contract and become a free agent as of July 1. And since nobody believes Vince Carter is a star more than Vince Carter, he'll seek a max contract that will only come to him from a team that's far under the cap or a team willing to take this enigma via a sign-and-trade with New Jersey.
I believe the latter option will happen, and Carter will be flipped for some cheap young labor. We'll look back at his time in New Jersey as a microcosm of the team itself during the last few seasons: flashes of undeniable excellence mired in a muck of unfulfilled potential.
What I'll miss most about Vince Carter: that rare ability to show you something, for better or for worse, that you've never seen before on an NBA court.
What I'll miss least about Vince Carter: His look of disbelief and exasperation whenever a call didn't go his way. The eyebrows arch up, the forehead crinkles, the eyes seem to scream "DON'T YOU KNOW I HAVE A SHOE CONTRACT, REF?"; he looks like a 3-year-old who gets caught sneaking a cookie and then gets mad at his nanny for catching him.
So long, Vince. Time to find a new babysitter.
Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].