The 43-year-old Atlanta Hawks winger was denied a stunning outing by a season halted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I’m officially done with professional basketball.” Vince Carter, the eight-time All-Star flying man, officially retired from the sport on Thursday after 22 seasons with an elite and an Olympic title at the 2000 Sydney Games. The 43-year-old Atlanta Hawks winger made the announcement on his Winging it With Vince Carter podcast.
Carter was denied an outing worthy of his dizzying dunks by a season stopped neatly by the Covid-19 pandemic. He played his last game with the Hawks on March 11, the same night the NBA came to an end after the announcement of the first positive case in its ranks, that of Frenchman Rudy Gobert, a Utah Jazz player.
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The Hawks, with a record of 20 wins from 47 losses at the time of the break, were not among the 22 teams qualified to return to competition in July.
The fifth choice in the 1998 draf (player scholarship) by Golden State and traded with the Toronto Raptors, where he won the title of best rookie (practicing a sport in his first year of competition) of the NBA, Vince Carter had earned the nickname Air Canada, given his aerobatics during the dunk contest in 2000.
In Sydney, he guided the American team and lit up the world with his famous “dunk of death” crushed on the Frenchman Frédéric Weiss, measuring twenty centimetres more, in the group match of the 2000 Olympics. On the way to the Olympic coronation.
After passing through the New Jersey Nets, Orlando, Phoenix, Dallas, Memphis, the Sacramento Kings and finally Atlanta, he never won the ring. But in 1,541 regular-season games, he averaged 17.2 points, 4.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1 interception per game. Since July 2017, he has been one of five players to have scored more than 20,000 points.