There are very few certainties in life, but here’s one: if your team signs Vince Carter, get ready to shake your head.
At least ten times during a given season, you will look up and see Vince writhing on the floor, only to see him gamely hop up, and gingerly walk off the court, milking the moment for all it’s worth. The first couple times, you’ll be breathing a sigh of relief. Then, once you recognize the pattern, let the head shaking begin!
Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened when the Orlando Magic visited the Washington Wizards on Friday night. I was in attendance, and when he went down, there wasn’t so much surprise as there was disbelief. Only Vince Carter would find a way to get hurt by an Andray Blatche screen. I’m pretty sure Blatche, for all his virtues, weighs about 190 pounds.
And yet, there’s Carter up there, rolling around the floor in agony. If he hadn’t been crying wolf for his entire career, maybe there’d be more room for sympathy, but since it’s Vince, this is mostly just hilarious.
But the Orlando Magic don’t think this joke is very funny. From the Orlando Sentinel:
Thirty-seven games into the season, the Magic (25-12) are still trying to adjust to Carter — and Carter to them.
Sometimes, teammates stand around and watch Carter play. Sometimes, they defer to him unnecessarily or Carter defers to them unnecessarily.
"It’s different. We weren’t used to playing like that last year … Turk [Hedo Turkoglu] had the ball, Jameer [Nelson] had it. It was pretty balanced at the end of every game. Everybody got about the same amount of shots," forward Rashard Lewis said.
And now?
“Vince is the type of player who needs the ball in his hands. He dominates the ball sometimes. That’s how he became Vince Carter,” Lewis continued. "We got to adjust to that, learn how to play with him dominating the ball.[…]
Carter was brought in to give the Magic a consistent scoring presence, especially at crunch-time. He has been slumping, shooting a career-low 39.2 percent.
Carter currently leads the Magic—by a lot—in shot attempts, while averaging just 17 points-per-game. That’s not terrible, but put it this way: if someone’s going to dominate the ball on offense, he’d better score more than 17 ppg. Basically, the Magic have pinned their hopes to an athletic, injury-prone scorer that rarely scores in bunches anymore, and doesn’t use his athleticism to attack the basket. Doesn’t that sound fun?!
Take it from someone that worshiped Vince Carter for the first few years of his career. For the first two seasons, he was just ferocious. And then, bit by bit, he began to float out to the perimeter, and everyone around the league kept wondering why he wouldn’t attack the basket. He worked on his jumpshot, and that was great, but somewhere along the line, he got hooked on shooting from the perimeter. And he’s never been the same since.
Maybe it’s because his mindset changed or something, but he just became a pansy. It legitimately hurts to watch Vince Carter play; like watching someone with the potential to be the biggest, most bad ass movie star in the universe waste his time doing art flicks, trying to show his “range.” That’s Vince Carter. He could have been so, so captivating as an attacking guard, and instead, he spent his career trying to prove he can dominate with finesse.
This has happened at every stop in his career. It just so happens that the Magic are catching him on the downside of career, and they’re also one of a handful of serious contenders for the 2010 NBA Title, so this particular failure looks like it’s going to be exacerbated.
The Magic were the most fun team in the NBA last year, with some of the best chemistry we’d ever seen. They had Hedo playing point forward, Rashad Lewis and Mikael Pietrus spreading the floor, and in between a barrage of threes, Dwight Howard dominating in the paint. It was a kick ass show all the way through, and when they made a run in the playoffs last year, it was even better.
And then they dropped Hedo the point-forward, adding Carter in an effort to become more conventional.
And in the same way Vince Carter’s foray out to the perimeter ruined what made him great, Orlando’s concession to convention might just kill what made them special in the first place. It’s not the same team anymore. And, unfortunately for the Magic, it’s the same old Vince. Once again, he’s disappointing us, and this time, he may take the Magic—and all the infectious joy that they brought last year—down with him.
You can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head right now. Vince Carter strikes again.