The Whiteboard: NBA players who might have played their last game

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Tuesday night’s news that the NBA is discussing withholding pay if games are canceled felt like an early April Fool’s joke, but it was also a sobering reminder that we may have seen the last of the 2019-20 campaign already.

Ethan Strauss talks about the Warriors lost season

While the league is still optimistic about playing out the rest of the season at some point this fall, even if the regular season and playoffs are shortened, there’s an increasing likelihood we’re left with unresolved questions, storylines and anticipated matchups we’ll never get to see fully play themselves out.

Under that unfortunate but realistic train of thought, today’s edition of The Whiteboard pays homage to a couple of NBA veterans who may have already played the final games of their careers.

J.J. Barea

Just over a year ago, J.J. Barea tore his Achilles, an injury that is notoriously difficult for NBA players (or any athlete, for that matter) to come back from. He was doing well enough this season, putting up 7.5 points and 3.8 assists in just 15.0 minutes per game while shooting 38.2 percent from 3-point range.

However, Barea will turn 36 years old in June, by which point it’s highly unlikely the NBA season have resumed play. The Dallas Mavericks are a playoff team, but if the entire 2019-20 campaign is canceled, this soon-to-be free agent may simply call it a career at that point.

Tyson Chandler

A former teammate of Barea’s, the 37-year-old Tyson Chandler is currently one of the only remaining centers on the Houston Rockets‘ roster. Even if he wasn’t so deep into his twilight years, that’d still be bad news, since the Rox are all in on their small-ball experiment.

Chandler hasn’t seen game action since Jan. 18, and even if the rest of the season doesn’t get canceled, the hiatus gives Houston time to rest its core players for another small-ball run. Unless a specific playoff matchup absolutely demands for minutes from a true center, Chandler — who is on a veteran minimum contract that ends this season — may have already logged his final NBA minutes.

Vince Carter

We’ve already written our ode to what may have been Vince Carter‘s final game, and how it oddly mirrored an enjoyable career that never fulfilled expectations. This one’s fairly obvious, too: Vinsanity is 43 years old, playing in his 22nd NBA season, and had already announced this would be his final season.

The Atlanta Hawks couldn’t be further from playoff contention, so if the rest of the regular season is canceled, our last image of Air Canada on an NBA court will be the 3 he made just before the clock ran out on an OT loss, his career and the NBA season as a whole.

Carmelo Anthony

You can never count a team with Damian Lillard on its roster out of the playoff race … unless the rest of the regular season is canceled, that is. As it stood, the Portland Trail Blazers had 3.5 games to make up on the Memphis Grizzlies to snag that 8-seed out West, and they only had 16 games left to do it in.

Carmelo Anthony playing meaningful NBA minutes had been a nice development after he was out of the league for more than a year, but despite his 15.3 points and 6.3 rebounds per game this season, no one will forget his defensive flaws or his skill-set that’s not exactly tailored for the modern NBA game. Melo is one of the league’s all-time scoring greats, but at age 35 and on an expiring contract, a canceled regular season might mean Anthony’s last-ditch efforts to avoid a forced retirement fall short in the end.

Joakim Noah

After being something of a mini-revelation for the Grizzlies in 42 games last year, Joakim Noah was finally got his shot at a ring by signing on with the LA Clippers on March 9. Just three days later, the league suspended its season for the foreseeable future, before Noah even got a chance to suit up for this title contender.

If the NBA is able to salvage its postseason, there’s a chance we’ll get to see Noah take the court again. But if it’s canceled altogether, the fiery 35-year-old competitor, who’s dealt with a number of injuries and high on-court mileage in his career, may struggle to find another team to sign on with in 2020-21.

Udonis Haslem

Udonis Haslem has been a mainstay on lists like that for years now, but unless the Miami Heat are really whipping someone good in the playoffs, Feb. 22 was probably the last time we got to see the 17-year veteran play.

Maybe he’d find some minutes in a blowout if the regular season is preserved, but this really feels like the end for the 39-year-old Heat mainstay, especially since he hasn’t logged meaningful minutes in a season since 2014-15 and had only appeared in three games for a total of 21 minutes this year.

#OtherContent

During the hiatus, we’ll take all the Zach Lowe content we can get. On Tuesday, he whipped up quite an enjoyable read on how Charlotte Hornets coach James Borrego is keeping his team engaged by having them rewatch a 2012 playoff series from featuring Kobe Bryant and the Denver Nuggets.

Zion Williamson was on a roll in his first season, but the numbers from the five greatest rookie seasons in NBA history are pretty mind-boggling.

Our own Trevor Magnotti ranked the top 30 NBA Draft prospects from the 2010s, and you definitely don’t want to miss out on where Zion, Anthony Davis, Karl-Anthony Towns and the rest wound up on his list.

While I took a blind stab at which player from each team would be the best representatives in the upcoming players-only NBA 2K tournament (I stand by those selections!), the official 16-player field was released on Tuesday. Who ya got?