Vince Carter, Raptors fans make passionate reconnection

TORONTO — However anyone might feel about Vince Carter and the Toronto Raptors, or Vince Carter and Toronto, to each their own at this point.

But be very clear about one thing: Vince Carter doesn’t have any mixed feelings about the Raptors, about the city they play in or the country, either.

He’s all in. He’s all in on cherishing his time as a Raptor, cherishing his emergence as an all-star and a pop culture icon of the moment, where he somehow made a previously anonymous expansion team north of the U.S. border must-see TV through his once-in-a-generation combination of on-court power and grace.

The tears are real, the cracking voice a constant threat. The long pauses are to gather his emotions more than his thoughts. He can’t always get the words out. There’s too much there.

Carter is a 47-year-old who played 22 years in the NBA, earned a king’s ransom for playing a kid’s game, and someone who experienced pop-star levels of fame at a young age. But it was being repatriated as a Raptor that moved him in ways he couldn’t always put into words. Too many tears.

“Have you seen me lately? I really don’t know what else to say,” he shared in a media conference prior to being honoured at halftime of the Raptors’ 131-128 overtime win over the visiting Sacramento Kings. “I feel like my emotions speak louder than words. It tells a story. And you know, it’s just appreciation for where we were, where we were getting to, and where we are now, and now you wrap that up with a bow, you know what I’m saying? So (there’s) nothing else that needs to be said if you can’t really understand that, I mean, walking around with deaf ears and blind eyes.”

But anyone who was fortunate enough to watch and listen as his iconic No. 15 jersey lifted to the rafters at Scotiabank Arena will never forget it.

There was nothing canned or ceremonial about it. Instead, it was a raw, public, passionate reconnection between a fan base and an organization and their prodigal son. It was the unspoken words that only loved ones share when everyone acknowledges that nothing is perfect, the past is the past, and they are the only ones who can complete each other. It was a rib-crushing hug where everything — the good, the not-so-good, the incredible — were acknowledged as part of a unified whole.

It was less a jersey retirement ceremony than an affirmation of love, and all the complications that most powerful of emotions automatically brings.

“Listen to me, this is important,” Carter said to the sold-out crowd with a preacher’s conviction. “When this jersey goes up shortly, it’s not just No. 15 going up, it’s all of us going up. The memories that have been created for six years, however you view it, go up tonight. So I hope and pray we can enjoy our jersey being retired, forever.”

Carter has never publicly apologized for whatever actions he did or did not take prior to or in the aftermath of the angry split between the team and its most iconic player in December of 2004. But he’s never gone out of his way to try to correct the record, to argue that the hurt feelings didn’t matter, or were misplaced. He hasn’t slung mud or argued his case.

Instead, he’s let time do its work, and for the most part, it has. The first signs came a decade after the trade when he returned to Toronto as a member of the Memphis Grizzlies, a 37-year-old role player by then.

The Raptors did a tribute video for him, a big step given Carter had only ever been booed or worse to that point when he returned to Toronto, his six years of highlights and all-star games not enough to smooth over the divide.

After thanking and acknowledging owners, executives, Raptors staffers and the XL SUV load of former teammates on the court from his glory days in Toronto — everyone from Muggsy Bogues to Antonio Davis — Carter made a point of addressing the fans.

“November 19th, 2014, was the day that I’ll never forget, standing right here, watching that video, tearing up, but my heart was full of joy to finally have that moment with you all,” said Carter, who said that moment was the beginning of the long thaw in the relationship between Carter, the fans and the organization. “It was something that I always wanted, and a feeling I wanted us all to have, which got us to where we are today.”

The moment marked the end of one of the most remarkable roller-coaster relationships a player and a fan base can ever have. From white-hot passion to red-hot vitriol, Carter inspired it all because he was the first star the Raptors fan base ever had and a huge one at that. It all fell apart when Carter lost faith in the direction of the organization he had helped lift to prominence, and the organization lost faith in him after a trio of injury-plagued seasons where he failed to recreate his 2000-01 peak. That split produced the kind of venom only the broken-hearted can muster.

It was enough to drive a wedge between Carter and the organization that took a decade to even begin to smooth over.

Even then there were boos, but they gave way to cheers when Carter’s on-court majesty was played out on the big screen.

Carter’s words Saturday night were from the heart. They weren’t a polished presentation that someone might have prepared for him. And Carter — just three weeks removed from being inducted into the Naismith Hall-of-Fame — wasn’t on hand as a casual, accepting another accolade after a career full of them.

Carter set the tone when he took the stage where he turned so many minds inside out with his ability to defy gravity and turn back time. In a resplendent dark suit and contrasting tie, with his mother, wife and children looking on, Carter walked to centre court in the darkened arena and let out a roar like he’d just dunked on Shaquille O’Neal. It was note-perfect in every respect, except that Carter had tears streaming down his cheeks. It was visceral. It was a middle-aged man revisiting the moment his nervous system was wired permanently, expressing the emotions that came most naturally.

The jersey retirement was a lot of things. For the Raptors organization, it was an opportunity to reconnect with some of the brightest moments of its past in the midst of what will likely be a trying season. For Raptors president Masai Ujiri — with his young roster looking on — it was a chance to educate them about what being a Raptor can be, about what is possible while playing in Toronto.

“He is a legend,” said Ujiri. “He’s a guy called half-man, half-amazing. He built our community. He helped put Toronto on the map, and yes, he taught us how to fly, and those that don’t know how to fly, he taught us how to dream how to fly.”

Through it all Carter’s emotions were bubbling and surfacing, bubbling and surfacing. If he always defended with the level of engagement that was on display from start to finish Saturday, all the unfair Michael Jordan comparisons that Carter was burdened with early in his career wouldn’t have been so unfair after all.

When an organization decides to make a relationship with a former player permanent, when a fan base decides to set aside the parts that they didn’t like, or wish never happened, the only hope is that it will be for a good reason. That the player on the other end of the gesture finds it meaningful, that it matters to them.

For Vince Carter, who played basketball as well as anyone has ever played it in a Raptors uniform, it meant everything.

“Going from where we started to where we are, I think trying to put that in perspective … it fills my heart and it oozes and overloads,” said Carter before the ceremony. “Because I have an appreciation of all of this, and I think that’s why I’m so damn emotional. I was always taught, and I always believed that when you appreciate something and it means something, this is how you react. So I’m going to react like this. Every time. Believe it.”

We do Vince. We do.

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