Vince Carter recalls the 2000 Slam Dunk Contest as a moment that changed everything for him, turning him from a rising star into a major sensation.
He had just been named NBA Rookie of the Year with Toronto the previous season, and now he was making his first All-Star appearance. When he slammed the ball down in Oakland, jumping so high that his arm went through the rim, he created one of the biggest highlights of his Hall of Fame career, which would continue for another 20 years.
“What the dunk contest did for me, overnight it changed my life,” Carter said Saturday during a press conference at Mohegan Sun Casino to talk about his induction.
Some players have careers where they seem to take off right after being drafted and never look back, like Carter, who played a record 22 seasons in the NBA.
Then there are players like Chauncey Billups.
The No. 3 pick in the 1997 draft was traded by Boston in his first season and played for four different teams in his first four seasons. There are many paths to the Hall of Fame.
Billups eventually found his place in the league and will join Carter as the main names in the 13-member class being honored in Springfield, Massachusetts, not far from where his first NBA experience went so badly that some called him a bust.
Billups, now the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, wouldn’t change anything about his journey.
“It’s just my journey,” Billups said. “Everybody’s is totally different and I say this all the time. From the time that I was drafted to today being on this stage and being this weekend, like, it was a tough road for me. There was not a lot of traffic on that road.”
Joining them in the class are Lakers defensive star Michael Cooper, high-scoring Phoenix player Walter Davis, and former Knicks champion Dick Barnett, along with WNBA stars Seimone Augustus and Michele Timms.
Jerry West is being inducted as a contributor—his third induction after being honored as a player and with the 1960 U.S. Olympic team—along with Doug Collins, Pacers owner Herb Simon, and college coaches Bo Ryan and Harley Redin, plus high school coach Charles Smith.
As Augustus prepares for the ceremony, she will also be thinking about her team. The Minnesota Lynx, the team she helped to win four WNBA championships, will be playing Game 2 of the WNBA Finals in New York on Sunday afternoon.
“I’ve gotten so many text messages like, ‘We wanted to be there,’” said Augustus, who added that her response is: “Like, go out there and get Game 2 and hopefully bring home a championship.”
Billups eventually earned a championship too, winning the NBA Finals MVP when the Detroit Pistons took home the title in 2004. He made five All-Star teams while with the Pistons and Denver Nuggets, but that success came after a tough start to his career.
He played 51 games in Boston before being traded to Toronto, then had short stints in Denver and Minnesota before arriving in Detroit. There were doubts about what kind of point guard he was—or if he was even a point guard at all.
“It just didn’t translate fast enough, but I never believed what they said about me,” Billups said. “I just kept fighting, kept scrapping and it turned around.”
Carter never won a championship like Billups or Cooper, who won five titles with the Lakers, but winning wasn’t his main goal as he continued to play later in his career. He pointed out that some of the teams he joined weren’t real contenders.
“I played the game because I love it and it wasn’t about chasing money and honestly it wasn’t about chasing rings,” Carter said.
He had hoped to play for 15 years in the NBA, but once he got there, he said he’d stick around for a couple more years. In the end, he became the only player in league history to play in four different decades.
The only reason the dunk contest win wasn’t the clear highlight of his career is because he had another amazing moment later in 2000, when he jumped over France’s Frederic Weis for a stunning slam while helping the U.S. win an Olympic gold medal.
He had been looking forward to his chance to dunk for years, staying up late to watch and record All-Star Saturday nights. He was so excited for his opportunity that he treated it like a real game day, even taking his usual afternoon nap.
When it was time to perform, he delivered, saying he had never even attempted the arm-through-the-rim dunk before that night.
“When I got that opportunity, I looked into the stands and I was on another level as far as just excitement and hype for the moment,” Carter said. “I felt the routine that I had the night before wasn’t going to win and I took a chance, and we’re here today talking about the good because it could have gone bad.”
