Fairview4Life wrote:HiJiNX wrote:Fairview4Life wrote:
No one with any decision making ability was wondering if the Raptors would stay in Toronto.
The point is flying over your head. The point is that Toronto wasn’t seen as a legitimate franchise in an NBA sports cultural sense before Vince arrived and for some time until he left. I’m not sure why our fanbase keeps downplaying that. We are not are all grateful enough for Vince’s contributions to Toronto. Why? It has nothing to do with his play but how he left. And I hated it, too. But it’s been like 20 years. Time to move on and let it go.
The team wasn't seen as a legitimate franchise because of Vince, but because they started winning for a couple years. We went immediately back into craptors mode until around 2015. You can say the winning was because of Vince, but I don't personally think that the team would have been worse off if McGrady stayed and Vince left, for example. Or we stuck with Jamison in that draft and McGrady stayed.
Why should we move on about the negative stuff but not the positive stuff? His contributions to Toronto in an "NBA sports cultural sense" were also 20 years ago and as we saw, fleeting. His contributions were entirely around making games exciting to watch for like 4 years that topped out with a single playoff series win. That's great, and fun, but hardly some irreplaceable contribution to sports culture in Toronto that deserves a jersey retirement.
I think they will probably retire his jersey because you can't tell the story of the Raptors without him and nostalgia, but at the same time, there are a lot of other dudes in that same conversation that don't really "deserve" a jersey retirement either.
Again, I think you’re absolutely downplaying the level of impact Vince Carter had here in Toronto. And that he was a legimate superstar for a few years while here.
As far as playoff success goes, he never had a number two while here. After Vince left we didn’t win another playoff series for about ten years. That says a lot about our issues as an org, historically.
Vince as a player and an ambassador for the Raptors and Canada is undeniable.
Maybe you’re seeing things from a purely on court production perspective but I think when we evaluate a player like Vince, that impact and what he meant to the culture of basketball in Canada, and the perception of basketball in Canada, is a part of the conversation. Plus it’s not like Vince was some scrub.
Again, he was the most popular player in the league for several years, a league that had Kobe, Iverson, and Shaq in it, and had the numbers to back it up. The fourth quarter comebacks. The game winners. The only thing he really lacked was playoff success. Yeah he flamed out in his first year and then came back the year after and goes toe to toe with the league MVP and was a jump shot (or a missed Oakley layup) away from beating him. And it’s not like he had a lot of help. Vince was still the best player we ever had here until Kawhi mercenaried for a year and helped us get a chip.
Vince wasn’t a scrub. He was a damn good player and an even better ambassador at a time when we needed one. And you can’t say that we didn’t because we ended up hiring Drake literally for that role about a decade after Vince’s departure.
Vince is important enough and good enough, first ballot HOF good enough, to get his jersey retired here. It befuddles me that anybody would disagree. Emotionally, I get it but when we look at straight facts, it’s hard to argue against retiring his jersey here, and I doubt there is anybody who works in the NBA in any capacity, media or otherwise, who would agree. They’d get laughed at by their colleagues as not serious people.
Here’s even another way to look at it. When folks say Vince they don’t gotta add the Carter because we know who they’re talking about. So when you look at the first name only guys—Shaq, Kobe, Mike/Michael, Dirk, Timmy, Hakeem, Patrick, Gary, Lebron, Steph, etc—you start to see a bunch of players who objectively speaking deserve to have their jersey’s retired by their franchises.
Of course, I know what I just wrote is a ridiculous argument but I think it illustrates that there are so many ways in which Vince has proven his worth as a player and his best years, certainly his most iconic, were with us here. So whether by stats or mythology or any other metric that we measure franchise players by, Vince should be a shoe in to get his n jersey retired. Anything less would be disrespectful.
not strong, only aggresive cuz the power ain't directed/ that's why, we are subjected to the will of the oppressive
