Is Vince Carter a Hall of Famer?
— -- Vince Carter isn't quite finished. Formerly the game's greatest dunker and now the oldest player in the NBA, Carter will turn 40 in January.
Carter will reach the end of the NBA line sooner rather than later, at which point a debate that has long divided fans and analysts will take on new urgency: Is Carter a Hall of Famer?
Argument for: Hall-worthy numbers
Even in his age-40 season, Carter has supplied crucial firepower off the bench for the Memphis Grizzlies so far, averaging 9.9 points in 27.2 minutes per game -- the most he has played in six years.
Career totals don't hold the same sway in basketball as they do in baseball, since per-game averages are more important. Nonetheless, every eligible player with at least 25,000 points is in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame. In fact, only one eligible player ( Tom Chambers, with 20,049) with at least 20,000 points hasn't gotten the Hall call. (Antawn Jamison, a college teammate of Carter who retired with 20,042 and is not yet eligible, will surely join Chambers.)
Of course, in the future some of these career thresholds might change as players enter the league earlier, enabling them to rack up higher totals. But when he retires Carter is likely to be the leader in career points by far among those not in the Hall.
There's also the matter of All-Star appearances. Carter made eight of them, and only one eligible player with at least eight is not in the Hall of Fame (1950s star Larry Foust). All but one of the eligible players with seven All-Star appearances have made the Hall of Fame (Jack Sikma is the exception there, as I detailed in 2015).
Based on the precedent established by Hall of Fame electors, Carter should be a lock. Basketball-Reference.com's Hall of Fame probability measure gives him 94.6 percent chances of making it in. But, with Carter, it's never quite that simple.
Argument against: Carter's exit from Toronto
Carter's case will always be complicated by the way he left the Toronto Raptors, the team with whom he reached his greatest heights. Frustrated by the way Toronto management handled hiring a new GM and coach in the summer of 2004, Carter was ineffective at the start of the following season.
He averaged just 18.8 points per 36 minutes in 20 games before being traded to the Nets, then 25.4 points per 36 minutes after the trade. Per Basketball-Reference.com, the Raptors were outscored by 10.6 points per 100 possessions with Carter on the court pre-trade, worst of any player on the team with more than 500 minutes played.
Despite his role in establishing the NBA in Toronto, Carter was booed by Raptors fans for years when he returned to Air Canada Centre. More recently, however, Carter has mended fences with fans in Toronto. When he returned in 2014, Carter was recognized with a tribute video as part of the Raptors' 20th anniversary celebration and the boos turned into cheers.
If Toronto fans can forgive, the rest of us probably should too.
Argument against: low peak, limited playoff impact
There are more concrete basketball reasons to be skeptical of Carter's candidacy. While he racked up All-Star appearances with the Raptors and Nets, Carter made only two All-NBA teams: a third-team selection in 1999-00 and a second-team pick the following year.
More generally, Carter had few of the transcendent seasons we expect from a Hall of Famer. (He's better known for his transcendent moments, such as at the 2000 slam-dunk contest and at the Olympic Games that summer, when he dunked over Frederic Weis.)
He peaked at 16.5 wins above replacement player (WARP) by my metric in 2000-01, finishing eighth in the NBA. That was only his season with at least 15 WARP; of the 15 eligible players with precisely one season of 15-plus WARP, only four have been elected.
Then there's the postseason. Carter's reputation for shrinking from the moment was solidified in 2001, when he opted to attend his graduation from North Carolina on the morning of Game 7 of Toronto's conference semifinals series with the Philadelphia 76ers. After traveling to Philadelphia the day of the game, he shot 6-of-18 in a one-point Sixers win, missing an attempt in the final seconds that could have won the game.
That criticism was almost certainly unfair. Carter did have nine assists in a low-scoring game where counterpart Allen Iverson shot no better (8-of-27, albeit with 16 assists). But it proved emblematic of Carter's relatively limited impact on the playoff stage. His teams reached the conference finals only once (in 2010 with the Orlando Magic) and Carter has played just 82 playoff games, 30 fewer than teammate Tony Allen.
Argument for: Longevity
When Carter joined the Dallas Mavericks before the 2011-12 season, I would have bet against his Hall of Fame chances. Carter was almost 35 and coming off the two worst seasons of his career. Improbably, Carter found new life as a 3-point specialist off the bench, and he has extended his ability to contribute deep into his 30s.
Carter now has 14 seasons with five-plus WARP, and that puts him in much more exclusive territory. Inner-circle Hall of Famers Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and David Robinson had 13 such seasons apiece; Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had 12 because they were forced into early retirement.
Being capable for a long period of time isn't alone grounds to make the Hall of Fame -- Mark Jackson had 15 seasons with five-plus WARP and there's no groundswell of support for his case -- but in combination with Carter's career scoring total and number of All-Star appearances, it's enough to push him over the top in my mind.
In all likelihood, Vince Carter is going to be a Hall of Famer, and rightfully so.
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