Hall of Fame conversations are, to be quite honest, pointless. They’re often circular in nature, saying well, if Player A is a Hall of Famer and Player B is better than Player A, then Player B is obviously a Hall of Famer too. The problem with that is, of course, that if you dig deep enough, you’ll always find someone worse than the player you’re championing, especially when viewed through the prism of eras. It’s nearly always the same. Hall of Fame conversations are boring. Vince Carter, on the other hand, is not boring. Rather than numbers, his career is best summed up by the calls of awed announcers, calls which would not be out of place as blurbs on movie posters: “It’s over!”—Kenny Smith “He jumped over his head!”—Doug Collins Carter’s “Half-Man, Half-Amazing” nickname may have been inaccurate in the sense that—at his peak—he was far more than half amazing. He was the most devastating in-game dunker since the days of Dominique Wilkins and a young Michael Jordan, able to create in the open court and destroy the most intimidating shotblockers with equal aplomb. He ended Frederic Weis’s NBA career before it even started. If fear was a Hall of Fame measure, there would be no debate around Carter’s qualifications. Here, however, are some things Vince Carter has never done: He’s never been named first-team All-NBA, never played in an NBA Finals, never led the league in a major statistical category. He never finished higher than 10th in MVP voting. At no point, according to the usual metrics, was Vince Carter the best two-guard in the NBA. Had his career ended at, say, 35, maybe he’s not a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But it didn’t. At 34, Carter signed with the Dallas Mavericks and, for the first time in his career, became a bench player. He thrived in his new role, providing scoring punch off the bench and mentoring young players—who, at that point, was basically everybody. And as the tail end of his career stretched out, first in Dallas and then in Memphis, his career numbers continued to pile up. Health willing, he’ll score his 25,000th career point next year, something only 20 other players in NBA history have ever done. As Hall of Fame credentials go, that’s an automatic. - See more at: http://ca.complex.com/sports/2017/05/why-vince-carter-is-a-no-doubt-first-ballot-hall-of-famer
