2012 Vince Carter in the building pic.twitter.com/KS5vdnE6X9
— Logan Murdock (@loganmmurdock) November 28, 2017
Oracle Arena was robbed of a potential dunk of the year.
The thief was Andre Iguodala.
On Monday evening, 40-year-old Kings’ forward Vince Carter found himself alone on a fast break, streaking toward the hoop with an opportunity to throw down one of his signature dunks. Even in his 20th NBA season, Carter still has the hops to make highlight reels sizzle, but at his age, he just needs to be a bit more careful.
So when Carter thought he was by himself, he did a double take, and noticed Warriors’ guard Andre Iguodala lingering nearby. Instead of tossing down an epic windmill or breaking out another ridiculous dunk, Carter slowed up, cocked his arm back, and completed a vicious one-handed slam.
Carter told Marc Spears of The Undefeated that because he saw Iguodala closing in, he didn’t want his efforts to turn into a “train wreck.”
“I saw [Warriors forward] Andre Iguodala running on the side, so that eliminated some of the things I wanted to do,” Carter said. “I looked and saw him and said, ‘Nah, let me do something easy.’ If I go to windmill and he is close by, I didn’t want a train wreck. But he stopped and said, ‘I stopped to see what you were going to do.’ I was like, ‘Ah, man, you should have said something.’ It was cool.”
Carter also told Spears that after his dunk, he realized the craziness of the moment, considering some of the Kings’ players are just half his age. When Carter won one of the greatest dunk contests ever at Oracle Arena (then Oakland Arena) back in 2000, some of his teammates were just toddlers.
“Then I looked at the bench and everyone was jumping up and down,” Carter said. “Guys there are 19. When they were 2 or 3 they saw me [dunk]. It was just cool for them to see it. Hopefully, I can give them more down the line.”
Though this NBA season will certainly feature dunks with greater displays of athleticism and dunks with higher degrees of difficulty, there’s no doubt a Carter windmill would have been one of the best highlights of the year.