NBA Free Agency: Signings of our dreams

We The North, Plus Vince Carter

by Steve McPherson (@steventurous)

There’s no basketball reason for Vince Carter to return to the Toronto Raptors, the team in whose jersey he did this and this and this and a whole lot of these — that’s a video I watch at least once a month, by the way. The Raptors’ wings — DeMar DeRozan and Terrence Ross — are progressing nicely and the contract Carter would likely garner doesn’t really make sense for Toronto.

But Holy God, dudes: just the thought of the dusty feels that would be generated by Carter elevating for a throwback slam like the one he dropped all over the Kings last season in a Raptors jersey is enough to get my jaded and blighted heart pumping deeply red and oxygen-rich blood. I would need a video montage like the one with the Spurs now and then. I would need Carter walking alone out onto the Air Canada Centre’s floor to The National’s “Hard to Find.”

I loved Carter in my youth for his explosiveness, for that combustible and perfect mixture of Jordan’s grace and ‘Nique’s viciousness, but as both he and I have aged, I’ve come to appreciate the way he’s managed his game and evolved into a key player off the bench for the Mavericks. His career is evidence of two inverse things: the possibility that you really do need some kind of overwhelming killer instinct no matter how athletically talented you are and the possibility that you can have a perfectly satisfying and long career without it.

Carter finishing his career in Toronto wouldn’t likely change his legacy, but that doesn’t matter to me. The second verse of “Hard to Find” begins, “What I feel now about you then / I’m just glad I can’t explain.” That’s a beautiful way to get at a unique, weird feeling that words can never quite reach, a sort of emotional afterimage or ghost note. That kind of resonance adheres to precious few things in this world, but for those of us who watched Carter demolish the rim more than fifteen years ago, a return of Half-Man, Half-Amazing to the Air Canada Centre would carry just that sort of thick dreamy echo.