Carter Gets Back Up, the Lakers Fall Down

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Vince Carter didn’t get the limo with the chilled champagne. Instead, Shaquille O’Neal splattered him all over the new Staples Center floor with a hard foul in Sunday night’s third quarter, after which Toronto’s wonder child arose to score the last 17 of his career-high 34 points, leading the Raptors to a 111-102 victory over the Lakers.

“Half man, half amazing,” O’Neal said later of Carter.

Carter, rookie of the year last season, didn’t face the Lakers in the lockout-shortened season but they found out the award went to the right man.

“He put on a good show,” Ron Harper said. “They have a very fine young team. They’ve got young players who can jump out the building. Maybe when I was young, I could hang around like that, but at my age, I can’t hang around like that. My hat’s off to them.”

This was a shootout from the word go, with the Raptors making 10 of their first 13 shots and grabbing an early 14-point lead. They were up, 62-57, in the third quarter when the 6-foot-6 Carter found himself guarded by 6-0 Derek Fisher, waved his teammates away, then drove to the hole.

Fisher fouled Carter as he went airborne, just as Vince ran into O’Neal. Carter crashed heavily to the floor and stayed there for several minutes while the medical staff knelt over him. Then Carter got up, made his free throws, left the game and went to the dressing room, where they found he’d suffered a bruised hip.

“Wasn’t a hit, brother,” O’Neal said later. “You run into a big wall, that’s what happens.”

The Raptors noticed it but they didn’t think it was a dirty play. Of course, they then proceeded to turn it up at their end of the floor the rest of the way. Antonio Davis, who is a friend of O’Neal’s, pushed Shaq into the first row on a layup, and Charles Oakley thumped a driving Harper.

“I don’t think Shaq’s a dirty player,” Oakley said. “But things happen. He said he didn’t mean it.

“We don’t allow people to lay it up at our end, either. After that, we started laying the wood to them. We got some guys who can lay wood too.”

It was Toronto 64, Lakers 57 when Carter left in the third quarter, and Lakers 68, Toronto 66 when he returned to save the day.

The first time he got the ball, he drove into the middle, put up a shot, saw O’Neal block it, snatched it back, put it up again from 15 feet and made it.

The next time down, Carter made a 20-footer.

The next time down, he made a three-pointer.

Let’s see. He jumps like the young Dominique Wilkins. Makes shots like Larry Bird. Comes from North Carolina like you-know-who. And he’s a gamer too.

The Lakers chased the Raptors into the fourth quarter but as Coach Phil Jackson noted later, “We just couldn’t stop them. We couldn’t seem to solve them personnel-wise.”

Besides Carter, five more members of Toronto’s personnel went for double figures, including reserve sharpshooter Dell Curry, who got 10 of his 13 in the fourth quarter, when Jackson tried putting Robert Horry on him.

Nevertheless, the Lakers were still within 102-99 with 1:34 left when Carter, with Harper in his face and a second man running at him, made a 19-foot rainbow. The next time down, Dee Brown made a three-pointer and that was that.

O’Neal finished with 37 points, 19 rebounds and five assists but the Lakers had only two others in double figures (Glen Rice 29, Harper 15). Their game plan isn’t predicated on letting anyone score 111 and seeing if they can catch them.

For his part, Carter said he didn’t know if it was a clean hit and didn’t care.

“I was just worried about me,” he said. “I let my teammates worry about that. I did what I had to do for my team.

“I don’t let the game get personal.”

“It’s inevitable that somebody is going to try to knock him down, take him out of the game,” Raptor Coach Butch Carter said. “I don’t think Shaq intended to do that but regardless of his intent, it was definitely a very hard foul.

“I think they sent their message or whatever, and he sent his.”