"Who does Shaquille O' Neal think he is? Now Elden Campbell, there's a player who won't disrupt the team chemistry!" " NBA Hall of Famer and NBC analyst Bill Walton.
Even the best and the brightest can make mistakes in determining greatness, but few will dispute that Michael Jordan is far and away the greatest player since the inception of color television (to pacify the purists who insist that players like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell were better back in the 14th century). Jordan's accolades are infinite; he won five Most Valuable Player awards, won 10 scoring titles, and led the Bulls to six titles in eight years. The day he retired (for the second time), people bowed their heads in reverence, realizing that there would never be another Michael Jordan. Of course, by midway through the next season, the question arose, who would be the next Air Jordan?
Those who assumed that there would be a de-facto Jordan replacement looked to Kobe Bryant, Grant Hill, Allen Iverson and even Shaquille O'Neal as his heir apparent. One by one, however, the new generation of NBA superstars proved themselves too impatient to build great teams around themselves and too unprepared to defeat the more seasoned teams such as the Utah Jazz, the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks who had learned how to win by consistently losing to Jordan. Suddenly, out of the Canadian sky, appeared The One.
A player who had starred at North Carolina. An incredible athlete who stunned all with his spectacular moves; the runaway choice for Rookie of the Year. The man who had wowed a nation with his victorious performance at the slam-dunk contest the next season. Out of the wasteland of Canada, the Toronto Raptors' Vince Carter had emerged as the new Jordan, the centerpiece of his franchise, the highlight of every highlight reel.
Carter enjoyed a phenomenal sophomore season last year, and NBC executives were drooling with the possibility of showing Vince Carter on national television during the NBA playoffs against the Knicks in the first round.
There was only one problem; the Knicks had not lost in the first round since 1990, and this year was going to be no exception. With NBC showcasing the game in prime-time, the Knicks forced Carter to miss his first 12 shots in Game 1. He ended up shooting 3 for 20 as the Knicks rolled to victory. The Knicks would shut him down twice more before the series was over, sweeping the Raptors in three games.
Carter's surprising ineffectiveness quieted a lot of people, and their was considerably less hype about Carter this season. On Sunday he met the Knicks in the first round again. The game was televised on NBC, and I knew Carter would be hungry for revenge until he shot a pathetic 5 for 22, looking completely uninspired in the Knicks close victory. Let me take this opportunity to remind you that this is not the next Jordan.
Yes, it is true that Jordan did not win a title until his seventh season, but such an argument does not justify Carter's ineptitude as a big game player. In 1986, Jordan's second season, he too went out in the first round of the playoffs, but not before torching the Celtics for an NBA playoff scoring record 63 (!) points in a game and setting an NBA record for highest scoring average in a series. The Bulls provided a terrible supporting cast until the emergence of Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant in the late 1980s, the same time the Bulls made their first trip to the conference finals.
In all fairness, Carter is only 24 years old, and has at least another decade to prove himself. He will have to make the most important decision of his career this off-season when he chooses between becoming a free agent or signing a long-term contract in Toronto. Although he may have personal aversions to living in Toronto, the decision to remain with his original team would speak well of his determination to build a strong team around himself. Tim Duncan, for example, spurned a great deal of money to try to win a second championship with the Spurs. Even bad-boy Allen Iverson endured a half-decade of mediocrity, but now that he is older and more mature, he is in excellent position to lead his team to the NBA finals this season. Counter-examples include Shaquille O'Neal/Penny Hardway and Kevin Garnett/Stephon Marbury, two tandems of young superstars that lost an opportunity to achieve greatness by succumbing to greed. To this day, only O'Neal has won a championship, but the saga that has ensued with his self-centered teammate Kobe Bryant is only another testament to the lack of maturity in this generation of superstars.
Carter will no doubt be wooed by the full gamut of the NBA's worst, from Washington to Chicago, ironically enough, Jordan's current team and his former one. But if Carter has any interest in the pursuit of true greatness, he will weigh his options very carefully, and perhaps one day finish what he started in Toronto. But until he learns how to beat the Knicks, not exactly the reigning dynasty in the NBA, he will never have a dynasty of his own, and Jordan will remain the benchmark of true greatness.
