After Drop, He Posts a Net Gain

Vince Carter flies again.

It really is the one they called Half Man, Half Amazing before he turned into Half of What He Had Been.

Regarded as the next great player when he took over the All-Star dunk show in 2000, Carter’s scoring average dropped from a high of 27 to 15.9 this season before the Toronto Raptors gave up and traded him.

The New Jersey Nets, hoping he hadn’t been giving his all but would for them, hit the jackpot. Carter is averaging 26 points as a Net and ignoring all unkind suggestions.

“Life is good,” he says. “I’m playing with the best point guard in the league [Jason Kidd]. It’s a new start. It’s just been fun. I can’t stop smiling and talking about it, just because of the opportunity to get a new start.”

There never was a star like Carter and not only because he was the most spectacular of the spectacular. There never was one who could turn so ordinary and be so blase about it too.

There was never one who had so little idea of what was expected of him for that $12.6-million salary but was such a stand-up guy at the same time. When people suggested the Raptors’ fall was his fault, he disagreed, but he always talked and never got upset.

He always faced the music; he just couldn’t hear it. Among Toronto writers, the scouting report on Carter was, “He’s a better guy than player.”

Carter never stopped being special to the fans, who made him the leading All-Star vote-getter, no matter what he did. In the 2002-03 season, when he played 43 of the 82 games, he was voted on ahead of the retiring Michael Jordan.

That was the Atlanta game in which everyone wanted to know:

* Whether Carter would give Jordan his starting spot;

* What Carter was doing there in the first place.

On media day, Carter was the first All-Star in the interview room. He didn’t have a good answer for any of the questions, but he replied patiently to all of them.

This season he was averaging a modest 19 points when voting closed Jan. 23. His four-year run of topping all vote-getters ended, but he still led all Eastern forwards, leaving him once more gratified and mystified.

“I’m thrilled and honored through all that, in good times and bad times, and I can’t figure it out and I don’t try to,” he says. “I can’t explain it -- ‘How is it that you always get voted on?’

“I don’t know, and I’m afraid to really go do the research to try to figure it out because I figure I’ll mess it up. You know what I’m saying?”

He doesn’t know. He thinks he’s just spectacular. He doesn’t know how spectacular he really is.

Another One Bites the Dust

Jordan was considered the greatest player the game had ever seen, but as soon as he retired in 1998, the search began for his successor, as if there had to be one out there.

Grant Hill, Jerry Stackhouse, Penny Hardaway and Kobe Bryant had all tried on the glass slipper when Carter blew everyone away, reviving the long-dormant dunk contest on All-Star weekend in Oakland.

“You don’t see the kind of things he did except in a video game,” said John Starks, the former New York Knick guard.

Shaquille O’Neal was caught by TNT cameras going bug-eyed at Carter’s feats. Named co-most valuable player of the next day’s game, O’Neal said the high point of his weekend had been “Vince, of course.”

That fast, Carter became the one. Narrating highlights of a subsequent game-winning three-pointer Carter had made at Boston, ESPN’s Linda Cohn noted, “He says he hates the comparison to Michael Jordan, but let’s face it, how can you avoid it?”

Carter could avoid it, all right.

“Just from in the middle of February [and All-Star weekend] to the end of February, it was just totally different,” he says. “From one part of the season to the other, it was approached different, it looked different.

“At the games, before practices, after practices, everything was just totally different. And I was just fortunate to have some of the guys who had been there with superstars, like Charles Oakley. He’d seen that type of atmosphere and knew how to handle it.”

Oakley played with Jordan early in Michael’s career, but there was no comparison. Jordan hungered to surpass the greats of his day. Carter was determined not to get carried away with expectations, but pretty soon, he wasn’t even Vince Carter anymore.

He had an 18-person support staff, with personal marketing and public relations people. Carter’s parents had gone through a bitter divorce and his mother, Michelle, was in constant attendance. The Raptors had to clear all interview requests for Vince through her.

His career peaked. In 2000, Carter led the U.S. Olympic team in scoring en route to its gold medal at Sydney. In the 2000-01 season, he led the Raptors to Game 7 of their second-round series against the 76ers.

His career turned. He chose to attend graduation ceremonies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill the morning of Game 7 and fly back to Philadelphia via chartered jet. He scored 20 points, 12 under his series average, and missed a 20-footer at the end as the Raptors lost, 88-87.

In the next three seasons, his average dropped to 25, 21 and 23. He sat out 70 games because of injuries. His free throws dropped by 50%. The scouting report had always been to rough him up, but now it worked.

Carter had signed a long-term contract, becoming the first Raptor of note who hadn’t fled as soon as he could. However, the team’s win totals dropped from 47 to 42, 24 and 33, and gloom fell over the franchise.

Everything else went wrong too. When Carter left Puma shoes for Nike, Puma sued and won. His agent, Tank Black, went to jail for money laundering. When Vince dropped him, Black sued for $800,000 he said he had advanced Carter and won.

Last summer, Carter requested a trade “to resurrect my career.” The Raptors wound up dumping him for Alonzo Mourning, who didn’t report and was waived, Eric Williams and Aaron Williams. As the Toronto papers like to note, Carter is averaging 26.3 and the package the Raptors got is averaging a combined 6.3.

At least, everyone got that new start he wanted.

Way Off Broadway

In Toronto, Carter was a long way from the spotlight. In New Jersey, he’s still a long way from the spotlight.

In terms of glamour, the Hudson River that separates the Nets from Manhattan is as wide as an ocean. Having learned the hard way, ambitious owners Lewis Katz and Ray Chambers, who never could get their new arena in Newark, sold last season to Bruce Ratner, who says he’ll build one in Brooklyn someday.

The Newark and Brooklyn projects are similar in that neither has turned a shovelful of dirt. Ratner said he would open in the fall of 2007 but is back to 2008 and counting. It seems so far off, Net fans haven’t bothered to get angry. With the team struggling, attendance is down only 1%.

Insiders said Ratner just wanted the team as a wedge to gain approval for his complex. He began his first season by ordering the team to pare salaries, resulting in the departures of Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles, Lucious Harris and Rodney Rogers. Kidd was available for an expiring contract but was recovering from knee surgery at 33, with a $17-million salary, and no other team would gamble on him.

When the Nets started 2-11, Ratner did a 180-degree turn and told team President Rod Thorn to keep them competitive. Beating everyone else, starting with the Knicks, Thorn landed Carter, who quickly made it look like a coup.

With Carter, Kidd and Richard Jefferson, the Nets could have one of the league’s top attractions, the only question being whether it will ever open.

Jefferson broke his wrist and has yet to play with Carter. Kidd, who led them into the 2002 and 2003 Finals, wants to get back to them while he’s young enough and isn’t picky about whom he does it with.

“Everything has changed,” Kidd says. “It all starts from the top. We had an ownership change. It’s like starting over. They’ve tried to build a team during the season.... You never know what the scenario or what the situation here is....

“The window of opportunity can close. You look, a perfect example is Utah when they had [Karl] Malone and [John] Stockton. That window was so wide open for 18 years and it closed on them without them ever having a chance to win.

“We’ll see. I hope my window isn’t closed yet.”

Two weeks ago, the Raptors beat the Nets here. In an interesting development, not one of them said a bad thing about Carter.

“Everyone knows how talented Vince is,” Coach Sam Mitchell said. “He just didn’t have his heart into playing for the Raptors anymore.”

Said Jalen Rose: “It’s amazing what people say about him. They are totally wrong. This guy is genuinely a great person and a team player.”

Also on the positive side, it will be a long time before anyone compares Carter to Jordan again. Finally, he’s just Vince Carter.

“It’s always hard,” Carter says of his Toronto experience, “especially when you can’t figure out where it all came from and how it all turned for the worse. I’m just glad I’ve got a new start, a fresh start.”

Let’s see what he does with this one.