Vince Carter
(Simmons: #83, BBR: #80)
In Bill Simmons' The Book of Basketball, he uses his entire section on Vince Carter to complain about how Vince Carter would have been a better player if he had just cared more, and he has a point, which I will show you later, but when he was healthy and motivated, he showed the potential to be one of the best players of all time.
Vince Carter averaged over 20 points per game for 10 consecutive seasons, and he also averaged over 4 rebounds and 3 assists for that entire time as well. In his best season, 2000-2001, he averaged 27.6 points per game, fifth in the league, while averaging 5.5 rebounds and 3.9 assists as well. That year he also took Toronto to their only playoff series win, playing just as well in the playoffs as the regular season. That season, the only player in the league who was definitely better than Vince was Shaq, who had hit his prime.
Unfortunately, Carter was slowed by injuries over the next two seasons, and Toronto's momentum slowed, causing Vince to decide he didn't want to try anymore. He finally gave up in the beginning of the 2004-05 season, showing so little effort that it came as no surprise when he admitted after a trade to New Jersey that he hadn't been trying in Toronto. Here are his pre- and post-trade stats for that season:
Carter (TOR) - 15.9 pts, 3.3 reb, 3.1 ast, .411 FG%, .322 3P%, .694 FT%
Carter (NJN) - 27.5 pts, 5.9 reb, 4.7 ast, .462 FG%, .425 3P%, .817 FT%
The fact that he tanked that badly was so shameful that if I wasn't basing this top 100 on statistics and winning, I would have moved him down several spots. He is one of the most selfish players of all time, which is the reason he has seen so little playoff success. When he reached New Jersey, they immediately stopped competing for championships. The same thing happened in Orlando and Phoenix. Coincidence? Probably not.
There is no doubt that Vince Carter is a great player. His career scoring average is still over 22 per game, #26 all time and 8th among active players. He was a highlight reel of amazing dunks. He could do anything on the offensive end, but he could have been so much more. Even considering all of that, is it so bad to be one of the 40 best players of all time? I guess not.
It's tough to justify putting Vince ahead of Walt Frazier. Vince was not a winner, and Walt was. Vince was better at his peak, but not by much. The shortness of Frazier's career appears to be the thing that hurt him most, because Vince was able to put up 10 quality seasons, while Frazier only saw 8. Even without passing the second round of the playoffs, Carter had three great playoff seasons, which appears to have been just enough to pull him past Frazier, who would easily have been ahead of Carter if he had played one more decent season.
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