for the record, the people and fans who use the TNT interview where VC "admitted" to not playing hard should know the following:
John Thompson, the current TNT analyst and the former Georgetown basketball coach who conducted the interview, said he felt people misinterpreted Carter's words.''That boy never said to me, 'Coach, I just laid down and quit,' '' Thompson said in a telephone interview last week.''I was embarrassed and felt awful about it for his sake, because I knew what he was communicating to me. I think he was more expressing a desire of wanting to do better, as we all do.''
source:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2D6153FF930A15757C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2Now VC said that in a national interview but nobody cared ... Ahmad Rashad asked him straight up about Vince said "the power of editing" ... and for those of you what watch those John Thompson interviews, you can see how they are heavily edited to fit a 4 minute timeslot or whatever.
And how things went down in Toronto was not a good thing ... for both VCs part and managements part. I know im one of the very few to defend him for those last 20 games but I watched them all and even saw him live in one of them and it was just a weird situation. Everyone knew he was going to be traded, management was fielding offers, and Sam Mitchell kept Benching vince for huge stretches including the 4th in close games ... he wanted to play the youth of the team and let Vince know they are moving on without him ... Carter got booed at home vs san antonio but he still played and he was still standing and cheering his team on in the 4th as they beat the spurs ... he still got them off to a 3-0 start including a win vs the pistons (defending champs) and a game winning win vs Blazers ... It was just a weird time and its sad that out of all VCs games played ... people hold up those 20 games STILL TODAY and say "look how terrible he is" ... now I dont know VC personally or never met him but I come from the school of thought of looking at the whole picture ... if VC did that more than once? Id have a big problem. But it was obvious to me that for that brief time, he was going through a real hard time and dealing with his comments of "trade me now" and it was just a bad time for everyone ... hes not done it before then and hes not done it after then.
When I go back and watch games from 2000 and 2002 ... you can really see how much he has grown. He was very immature back then ... especially 2000 ... the media attention really got to him and he was depressed in interviews and it was surprisingly rough .... he really grew up in the 2002-2003 season where he got injured bad ... had surgery ... and came back early only to get injured again. In an interview years later, he came back early to help his team and to stop them struggling .... his HEART told him to come back but his body wasnt ready ... so when people criticize his heart, I always remember that season. Since then, VC has grown up and while hes not the same athletically, hes grown tremendously as a basketball player and its a shame that the media and fans of the NBA fail to recognize it.
I hope he does a good job this year and makes magic fans understand why a huge majority of the nets fans he just left have the complete opposite reaction that Toronto fans had when he left there. I am looking forward to his standing ovation when he returns to New Jersey cause he really played well there and gave all he had ... and they recognize that.
