It’s not really something a player strives to achieve, but as a child of nineties NBA, I want to know: Who will be the last player from the nineties to play in an NBA game? There are only seven players who Basketball-Reference classifies as “active” who also competed on the NBA floor in the 20th century. The countdown, from who I think is least likely to most likely to be the last nineties man standing:
7. Andre Miller
Nope, The Professor has still not officially hung up the sneakers. And hey, Miller was active in the playoffs for the Spurs last year — meaning he’s played an NBA game more recently than Khris Middleton or Tiago Splitter. Still, it’s pretty hard to imagine the depth chart hole that would have to open up in order for a team to think to revive Miller’s career from a standstill.
6. Nazr Mohammed
Mohammed has turned being an end-of-bench high-five distributor into something approaching performance art. You might have missed it, but the Oklahoma City Thunder — who were competing for a championship — signed Mohammed to a contract in March of last year. He played just 29 total minutes (regular season and postseason combined), a small step down from the 142 minutes he logged for the Bulls the year before. We’ve probably seen the last of Mohammed — but it also wouldn’t be too surprising to see him working those high fives in the 2019-20 playoffs, either.
5. Paul Pierce
Pierce announced before the season this would be his last year in the game, and nothing since then has indicated Pierce should push his career any further. Last year with the Clippers, Pierce’s 18.1 minutes and 6.3 points per game were dramatic new career lows. This year, in only 12 games: 12.3 minutes, 3.8 points per game. Still, there’s no shame in how The Truth ground it out until he couldn’t give any more.
4. Metta World Peace
For a player who could — and would — whip up all sorts of intense, dramatic news any night of the week, this current two-year postscript to his career with the Lakers has been remarkably quiet. On the outside of Los Angeles’ nightly rotation looking in, World Peace’s remarkable 20 percent field goal accuracy (and 13.3 percent 3-point accuracy) this year means he will probably drift away from the game this offseason in, somehow, the most peaceful way possible.
3. Dirk Nowitzki
Now, I feel, we move into the true contenders for the last nineties player standing. How’s this for irony: this year — the year when Nowitzki has unquestionably been his worst since his rookie season — is also the year when Dirk is easily pulling down a career high in salary. Dallas holds a $25 million team option for 2017-18 and even as far as legacy contracts go, that’s a pretty mighty fee. Although there will be plenty of negotiating room between the two parties this summer, I predict Dirk will elect to hang ’em up this offseason.
It feels like the Mavericks have been in decline for basically a whole era now — but this season is actually the very first year the team will finish under .500 since 1999-00 (Nowitzki, in his sophomore season, shared the starting lineup that year with Dennis Rodman and Shawn Bradley, among others). My guess is Nowitzki will want to step aside to allow the team to rebuild in earnest.
2. Jason Terry
It’s an unlikely career result for a man whose signature move is to pretend to be an airplane, but with Milwaukee this season, Terry has now totally locked into the Mike Miller career path of “coach on the floor”. Averaging 17.4 minutes per game this year while still connecting on 38 percent of his 3-point attempts, Terry could have three or four more years left of mentorship, graciously declining minutes responsibilities and sweet, sweet NBA paychecks.
1. Vince Carter
There have been an astonishing number of chapters to Vince Carter’s career. The “Half Man, Half Amazing” era is basically a museum piece by now — and the “Half Man, Half a Season” era also got totally washed out of our minds years ago. We’re now a solid half-decade into this current, once-surprising phase of Carter’s career: the earnest, off-the-bench hustler. Not only is Carter the very oldest player in the league today, but he is also the only player among these seven to play every single night — for a playoff team.
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Carter’s 23.9 nightly minutes is something historic just in itself. The only players to ever average more minutes in an age-40 season are the bona fide legends of endurance: Robert Parish, John Stockton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Karl Malone. We’ll see what Carter wants to do after his contract with Memphis expires this summer, but for now, not only does Carter have the most left in the tank of any nineties player — he has a legitimate shot at reaching Kevin Willis’ record of playing in the league as a 44-year-old.