Vince Carter, 42, will be returning to the NBA next season. It will be his 22nd season, a record. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, such as all 30 teams letting him go unsigned, Carter on Jan. 1, 2020, will become the first NBA player to play in four different decades.
Carter in 1998 was drafted out of North Carolina fifth overall by the Golden State Warriors and traded to the Toronto Raptors. Due to the 1998-99 NBA lockout, Carter did not make his NBA debut until January 1999. He won Rookie of the Year.
For context, that same year, Michael Jordan announced his second retirement in January, causing the Chicago Bulls to miss the playoffs for the first time in 15 seasons. The league MVP was Karl Malone, who had entered the league in 1985. And third-year NBA coach Gregg Popovich won his first NBA title.
Longevity doesn’t quite get the credit that other virtues do. Carter is nowhere near the level of Jordan or, to look at other sports, of six-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady, 41, or 15-time major winner Tiger Woods, 43. But he’s scored 25,430 points for eight different teams. There are only 19 NBA players ahead of him, and Allen Iverson, Charles Barkley, and Patrick Ewing are behind him. He’s an eight-time NBA All-Star, an Olympic gold medalist representing Team USA, and an NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion.
It’s that last accolade that helped Carter rise to prominence and carry basketball culture post-Jordan. During the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Carter, who is 6 feet, 6 inches tall, executed what is arguably one of the greatest dunks in basketball history when he jumped over the head of the standing 7-foot-2-inch French player Frédéric Weis. Carter’s dunk was so awe-inspiring that the French media dubbed it “le dunk de la mort,” or “the dunk of death.” It also helped him earn the nicknames “Vinsanity” and “Half-Man, Half-Amazing.”
The dunker of death’s career has proven deathless. In an age when American culture seems to idolize youthfulness, it’s the wise, old men of athletics teaching each new generation an important lesson: Respect your elders or end up on a poster.
