North Carolina Tar Heels: Vince Carter is Still Playing
The North Carolina Tar Heels elder statesman among NBA players plans to keep going for two more seasons.
The North Carolina Tar Heels have been in the post Dean Smith era since 1997. Ever since his retirement, there was still a strong contingent of players that he had put in the NBA. As time has passed that number has become smaller and smaller. Now it stands at one, Vince Carter. Carter is pushing forty now and the vintage Vince of days gone by only appears in flashes.
Carter is also not done yet. According to reports from ESPN video, Carter declared his intention to play this season and the next. That would give Carter a full twenty years in the league, a mark that neither Kobe Bryant nor Tim Duncan opted to match.
Zach Harper of CBS Sports pointed out that Carter should be able to hit some scoring milestones if he was indeed going to make it two more years. Harper noted that Carter would likely become the 22nd most prolific scorer in NBA history just ahead of Allen Iverson.
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Carter these days is a role player on a playoff minded Memphis Grizzlies roster. He is there to offer outside shooting off the bench. That was good enough for 395 points last season. It’s a long way since his days in Toronto and longer since the Final Four.
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Carter maintains that he still loves to play, and as long as that continues to drive him he will keep doing it. Or as he said to ESPN:
“I just love to play. It’s not out of me yet. When I don’t want to play and don’t want to put the work in, that’s when I step away from the game, but right now I still love it.”
Carter has been the last Dean Smith coached player in the league for about a year or two. Antawn Jamison was the only player still playing in the last few years.