joeydiditjoeydiditJoey did it JOEY DID IT JOEY DID IT!!!

Mazel Tov, big guy. Many years of happiness and peace for you and Salem (and the cats).

Vinsanity

Good job, Vince. Keep shrugging, you apathetic hack.



First, to my handful of readers, I apologize for neglecting you for so long. I can't say it won't happen again.

For years now, I've been railing against Vince Carter. I've always pointed out to anybody who will listen that he is a cancer for every team he's been on. When the Nets teamed him up with Jason Kidd, I predicted that it was a sentence of mediocrity until they got rid of him. And now, without him, I predict that the Nets will improve this year (the whole addition by subtraction thing). But I digress.

Now that Vince Carter has been traded to the Magic, I am predicting a decline from relevance for the once-promising young Magic team (and by once, I mean a few months ago before they got Vince Carter).

I'll say things like this often:

"If the Lakers kept their same team and added Vince Carter for free, they would have no chance of repeating."
"I think that he honestly makes every team worse that he's been on."
"Any team that he is on has no chance of contending for a championship."

and state the reasons (no defense, pussy, chemistry killer, subtracts from other players' effectiveness because he holds on to the ball for too long,...) people chuckle and half-heartedly agree or disagree with me. But I don't think I've ever stated it well enough to express how passionately I feel about this joke of a NBA star.

Until now. Bill Simmons has done it for me.

Here is Simmons' take on why Vince is the 4th most intriguing player leading into this NBA season, and I couldn't agree more:

Forget everything you know about him. Forget how he quit on Toronto, forget how Jason Kidd pushed for a trade to Dallas just to get away from him, forget that the most memorable moments of his career were a slam dunk contest and the time he dunked on Fred Weis. Forget that you're disappointed in him, that you don't trust him, that you wouldn't want to go to war with him. Forget that he's played 42 games TOTAL in 11 years, or that he hasn't made an All-NBA team since the first year of Dubya's presidency. Forget that he's the active league leader in "most willing to never drive to the basket again if you knock him down once" and "most times rolling around underneath the rim like he's been shot" categories. Forget all of these things. And ask yourself this question:

Has Vince Carter ever played for a good team?

His two best teams simply in terms of win totals:

2006 Nets (49 wins): Vince, a past-his-prime Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, Nenad Krstic, Cliff Robinson, Jacque Vaughn, Scott Padgett.

2001 Raptors (47 wins): Vince, Antonio Davis (Vince's only teammate to average 10-plus points or 10-plus rebounds), Alvin Williams, Corliss Williamson, Mo Peterson, Keon Clark, and a just-about-washed-up Charles Oakley/Mark Jackson combo.

Fact: He's never had a teammate make an All-NBA team.

Fact: He's never played with an elite guy in his prime.

Fact: The best coaches he ever had were Lawrence Frank and an almost-done Lenny Wilkens.

Fact: He's teaming up with a former Coach of the Year (Stan Van Jeremy), the league's best center (Dwight Howard), the league's best 3-point shooting forward (Rashard Lewis), an All-Star point guard (Jameer Nelson) and 4-5 solid role players on a team that desperately needs his ability to create his own shot and shoot threes. He's also going to be protected defensively for the first time in his career.

Put it this way: If Vince Carter is a great basketball player, if he has ANY greatness in him, then it's going to surface this season. Or else it wasn't there in the first place. Either way, we will have an answer. Which makes him pretty damned intriguing.