LEAP YEAR

In this age of the reluctant Olympic basketball player, consider Vince Carter.

He leaped at the chance, which is saying something.

Kangaroos don’t have hops like his.

Invincible? Who knows? But get ready for Vinsanity Down Under.

So Shaquille O’Neal has enough gold medals and Kobe Bryant had other things to do.

When Carter’s rather belated invitation to join the U.S. team arrived March 26--naming him to replace injured Tom Gugliotta a couple of months after being passed over for Ray Allen--his answer was a resounding yes, and the snub was forgotten.

“I look at this as the ultimate,” Carter said. “People ask me what means more, the Olympics or a championship? I say the Olympics.

“The Olympics are only every four years. The NBA championship is every year. If you don’t win one year, you can try to win the next year. If you don’t win this, four years is a long time.

“Being in the Olympics and winning, that’s like accomplishing the greatest thing in basketball besides becoming a Hall of Famer, in my mind.”

Until Carter signed on, NBC probably felt like tape-delaying this Dream Team’s games . . . indefinitely.

But Carter--whose 1,911,973 All-Star votes last season were the second-most in history behind you-know-who--makes the U.S. worth watching.

It’s not the margin of victory: It’s the margin between Carter’s elbows and the rim.

For a few days after the U.S. team gathered in Maui for its pre-Olympic training camp, it seemed as if Carter--the youngest member of the team at 23--was making a concerted effort to blend into the scenery.

After all, word was the USA Basketball selection committee had purposefully tried to choose a group of solid and talented if not all the flashiest players.

That ended with the first two exhibitions. Carter came off the bench to score 29 points in 19 minutes against Canada, then scored 24 points against a team of college all-stars on 10-of-10 shooting with an array of five dunks. (He is, after all, the reigning NBA slam-dunk champion.)

“I knew he could jump, but that was ridiculous,” Coach Rudy Tomjanovich said.

Alonzo Mourning was similarly taken aback.

“I can sit here and say I have seen the second coming,” Mourning said. “I played against Michael Jordan. I saw MJ at his best, but I don’t think MJ ever jumped that high. There are a lot of similarities, but then there a lot of things Vince can do better than Michael ever did.

“I thought I’d never see another, but he’s definitely the second coming.”

Ah, Michael.

Can we please leave all questions about him in the Northern Hemisphere?

Jordan is the one topic that turns the usually gracious Carter mum.

He has been compared to Jordan so much--start with the fact he averaged less than 20 points at North Carolina and then turned the NBA on its ear with his high-flying game--that he no longer will answer questions about him.

“Man . . . “ Carter said when someone mentioned Jordan and the Dream Team as idly as one would mention Magic Johnson.

He is firm that there is nothing symbolic about wearing No. 9 for the Olympic team, as Jordan did in 1992 in Barcelona.

Gugliotta wore No. 9, so Carter inherited it, like it or not.

Carter’s point--basically that he is not Jordan--is well-taken.

Jordan won six NBA titles, five most-valuable-player awards and 10 scoring titles.

Carter took the Toronto Raptors to the playoffs for the first time last season.

Worth noting, however, is the evolution of Carter’s game.

He is no longer merely a dunker.

As an NBA rookie, he averaged 18.3 points a game and shot 29% from three-point range.

Last season, his average jumped to 25.7 points--fourth in the NBA--and his three-point percentage leaped to 40%.

His assists went from 1.5 a game to 3.9.

Philadelphia 76er Coach Larry Brown, an assistant to Tomjanovich on the Olympic team who played at North Carolina in the 1960s and is close to Dean Smith, has known Carter since he was in college.

“As a young player, I think he tried to fit in at Chapel Hill, and they had a lot of good players there,” Brown said. “I know Coach [Smith] always felt he had an incredible upside. I remember when the draft was coming about, he talked to me about how special he thought he would be.

“But I don’t think anybody could have predicted how quickly he’d become what he is now.”

Hard to believe, but it was only 1998 when Carter played second fiddle to Tar Heel teammate Antawn Jamison, the national player of the year.

He since has passed Jamison--and a lot of other players--by leaps and bounds.

“And he still has a huge upside,” Brown said. “I think he’ll become a better ballhandler; he’s improved tremendously in that department.

“As you get older, I think guys tend to become better shooters, and he’s a pretty darn good shooter now.

“The thing that impressed me the most--aside from the obvious--is he really can pass. The more double-teams he starts to see, the better he can become, because he’ll make other people pay. I saw a side of that last year.”

Brown saw Carter during the season when the 76ers and Raptors played around the time the final Olympic selections were being made.

“I remember when there was talk from [former Toronto coach Butch Carter] that he shouldn’t go and he should have been picked before,” Brown said.

Smith, the Olympic coach in 1976, sent Brown on an errand.

“Coach wanted me to make sure I told Vince what an honor it was,” Brown said. “I tried to tell Vince they had basically selected these nine guys years ago, so you were still at Carolina when they picked this team.

“I went up to him before our game and said what Coach had told me, and he said, ‘Oh, no, no, I want to go. I’m excited to have the chance.’

“It is an honor,” Brown said. “I went in ’64. I coached in ‘80, but there was a boycott. I don’t know what greater honor you can have.”

Getting passed over for that honor in January did not sit well with Carter. The first two games after Allen’s selection was announced, a subdued Carter had 14 and 13 points.

The next game, Carter’s Raptors met Allen’s Milwaukee Bucks.

Carter scored 47 points--then a career high, and the most by any player in the NBA to that point in the season.

He also gave Allen a bloody nose with an elbow early in the game.

“There was no question about what was going on with the Olympic thing,” Allen said that night, calling the elbow “uncalled-for,” and scored 33 on the Raptors the next night.

Bygones, both players say.

“All that stuff, somebody started that. We’re friends,” Carter said.

The message was probably more for the selection committee than for Allen.

“Between Vince and I on the court, I could see this fire in his eyes, and I saw his disappointment at not being selected to the team,” Allen said.

“At a time when the relationship was so delicate, I just played my game and made sure I went out and played the way I play and helped my team win. I couldn’t worry about what was going on with Vince Carter on his side.

“But even during the game, you know, he even said, ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’ Because I was playing him real close and he swiped through me and he got me.”

Now they’re teammates until the medals are handed out Oct. 1.

“I don’t know if I told him this, but I said to one of the guys, ‘No matter what happens in life, the cream always rises to the top,’ ” Allen said. “If you’re doing the things you’re supposed to be doing, then you can’t be denied.

“That’s the case with Vince. Vince deserves to be on the Olympic team, and that finally broke down, because guys fell out. We’re all here now, and these are the guys who belong here.”

They belong here, and just as important, they want to be here.

“This is a big thing for me. I’m honored, and I’m having a great time,” Carter said.

“I could just be at home, hanging out, doing nothing, watching these guys.”

Instead, everyone’s watching him. Even the guys on the court.

“I’m not trying to steal the show,” Carter said. “It just happens, man.”