Enjoy Vince Carter While You Still Can Because He's Gone After This Season

As someone who wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Vince Carter this past season, I was relieved when he announced he was coming back at the end of April. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t currently have a team, but the Hawks would be stupid to not bring him back after he had such a great impact on that young locker room. He also can still dunk and actually contribute despite being 75 years old so throw the man 10-15 minutes a night and let him do his thing. If the Hawks pass, I guarantee someone will bring him in, hell I’d be down if Ainge did for a strong veteran presence.

Anyway, today on The Jump he let it be known that this is it. The Vince Carter Era is finally coming to a close at the conclusion of the 2019-20 season. He’ll have the record in seasons played at 22 and is a surefire HOF talent despite never winning a ring. As of now he’s 23rd all time in scoring, will most likely pass Melo this season and if he can match his 562 points he scored last year he’ll pass Alex English too and be right behind KG at 20. There’s a decent chance he finishes his career in the top 20 all time which is certainly impressive.

I know retirement tours are all the rage these days and in my opinion some are better than others. Wade’s? Annoyed the shit out of me probably because I hate him and those LeBron Heat teams. Dirks? Absolutely loved it. I think with Carter I’ll be more on the Dirk side. He deserves every bit of praise he’s about to get from each visiting arena in the league (even Toronto despite how that ended). I’d say he’s a shoe in to have his jersey retired but the Raptors flat out don’t retire jerseys and I dunno if his Nets tenure would make sense to do it there. At the end of the day though, Vince Carter will definitely go down as the best dunker I’ve ever seen and I always respected that he was so open about being anti ring chasing during the twilight of his career.

Now, because it’s the end of the day, let’s get to the highlights