A Star Came Through

Vincent Lamar Carter attended graduation ceremonies Sunday. Trouble is, Carter has a job--Toronto Raptors star. And Sunday was a workday, a deciding Game 7 playoff, which Toronto lost by one point when Carter missed a last-second shot.

When Vince Carter left the University of North Carolina early to bounce a basketball across North America for pro money, he promised his mother he would graduate. He’s been criticized for allowing himself this distraction--the most painful comments, no doubt, coming in some teammates’ “No comment.”

We think Carter sent a wonderfully refreshing message of personal priorities to countless young Americans and Canadians and to the National Basketball Assn., which touts literacy but next month will draft more high school teenagers, bypassing the old route to fame through the league’s collegiate farm teams. Fame can pay very well in modern America, and without the famous personalities of highly skilled players the NBA would be a collection of boring rich owners. Fame, however, can also be imprisoning, and one bar in the cell is the unseemly eagerness of many voyeurs to pass superficial judgment on the lives of the famous, which sometimes are as confused as our own. It’s their life, but it’s our entertainment. If we tut-tut over their carefully chronicled misdeeds, ought we not applaud positive acts?

What did Carter miss by graduating and arriving fully five hours before game time? Lying around a hotel room, that’s what. He finished the game with 20 points, nine assists and seven rebounds, which is 20 points, nine assists and seven rebounds more than his critics managed. Had Carter not missed that final shot--or had a teammate made one more shot during the game’s other 47 minutes and 58 seconds--the Raptors would have won and their fans would have been elated. Instead, we saw a pregame image of a young man looking giddy in his academic gown and his beaming mom dressed to the nines. Not a bad replay for everyone to savor.