Vince Carter is a living legend. He’s the most durable player ever and even though he hasn’t been a star in years, the fact that he’s still out there catching bodies, blocking shots, and knocking down threes at age 43 is quite impressive, to say the list.
You just can’t write the history of the game without mentioning Carter’s name. He’s been around for an all-time high 22 years and is just 20 games away from passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as 2nd all-time in games played.
Carter has played in a grand total of 1,541 regular-season games. Add 88 playoff games and you have 1,621; which is most than 90% of drafted players ever accomplish.
Most impressively, Carter has played with or against almost 40% of the players that have ever made it to the league. Like, in the history of the league.
Thus far, a total of 4,509 hoopers have played in the NBA since its foundation in 1946. Carter has been teammates with or played against 1,672 of those players, which is good for 37,081%. Vince Carter is also the only player in NBA history to play in 4 different decades (1990, 2000, 2010, 2020).
Even though Air Canada was never able to win an NBA Championship, he’s a no-brainer first-ballot Hall of Famer. He rarely had a true elite supporting cast and was a bit of a lonelier for most of his career.
Some even argued that he should’ve retired already to give his roster spot to a younger, up and going athlete with a bigger shot at playing more minutes, but c’mon man, what he’s doing is far more impressive than what most players have ever done.
It’s not easy to even make it to the league, let alone stay on it for 22 seasons. Hell, who knows? perhaps he’ll even come back for one more year after having 3 months to heal his body due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
