Getty Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart
Back in the day, Atlanta Hawks veteran Vince Carter was a bad man. Not literally, but on the basketball court, he was not one to be messed with. Back in the day, Vince Carter was one of, if not, the best dunkers in the game. By now, everybody who has ever heard of Vince Carter knows about the whole arm in the rim dunk. That’s old news. And while Carter isn’t necessarily doing anything crazy like that right now, doesn’t mean that he can’t.
At 41-years-old, Carter really seems ageless. How he’s still playing, and slam dunking the way that he always has, is just incredible. We all know the hype that he brings during his pregame warmups as he puts on a show against zero defenders, but don’t think that the man doesn’t get busy against a defense nowadays. The Boston Celtics found out first-hand that Carter is willing to put it down if the opportunity presents itself. And on Friday night, it did.
Carter Throws It Down on the Celtics
Vince Carter dunking at 41 years old >
Looks like a regular old dunk right? Nothing to see here. However, if you look at Celtics’ Marcus Smart before Carter went up and threw it down, he moved right out of the way. Now, we don’t want to speculate or anything here, but it sure looked like Marcus Smart was dodging Vince Carter on that play. In all honesty, though, we will cut Smart some slack. If you look at the scoreboard, Boston had a healthy lead over the Hawks, and Smart just decided the play wasn’t really worth defending.
So okay, we’ll give Smart the pass. Unfortunately, he hasn’t gotten it from his teammates though. As the Celtics were winning in blowout fashion, and having fun doing so, they found it quite entertaining that Smart visibly dodged a Vince Carter poster moment. According to Kyrie Irving, Smart was the laughing stock of the team after everybody witnessed it.
Smart Probably Won’t Do That Again
Kyrie Irving on Vince Carter’s dunk: “We we’re laughing when Marcus Smart moved out of the way.”
Irving confirmed that the members of the Celtics did in fact, catch Smart moving out of the way from Vince Carter’s dunk. And yes, the team was laughing at him. Now, they weren’t yelling at Smart because he almost got dunked on by an old man, but they laughed because he just avoided defending the play, period.
By no means are the Celtics trying to throw shade towards Carter, who’s still doing his thing at 41. In fact, Kyrie Irving made sure to throw tons of respect on Carter’s name during his postgame interview. Carter’s 12 point effort wasn’t a lot, but it’s still impressive considering the fact that he only saw 16 minutes off the bench. He may not be the player that he was in the 90s and the early 2000s, but don’t sleep on the man.