Vince Carter was an 8-time All-Star during his record 22 seasons, while Chauncey Billups was a 5-time All-Star and the 2004 Finals MVP.
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UNCASVILLE, Conn. – Everybody knows how to get to Carnegie Hall (“Practice,” as the old joke goes). But not everyone knows how to get to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, which is celebrating its 2024 Enshrinement weekend.
Chauncey Billups and Vince Carter, two members of the Class of 2024, figured it out while traveling decidedly different roads to Springfield, Mass., where the Hall ceremony will take place Sunday at Symphony Hall (NBA TV, 5 p.m. ET).
Both were high lottery picks, both maxed out their potential to earn their spots in the hoops shrine alongside 11 others to be honored, including former NBA players Michael Cooper and Walter Davis, as well as men’s veteran committee selection Dick Barnett. Going in as contributors: Doug Collins, Herb Simon and the late Jerry West (already inducted as a player in 1980).
Billups, though, was a classic example of a late bloomer. He played for four NBA teams in his first four seasons, five in his first six, an unusual resume for the No. 3 pick in the Draft. Eventually his career got traction in Detroit, where he helped the Pistons win the 2004 championship and was named Finals MVP. But he still didn’t reach All-Star status until two years beyond that, in his ninth season.
“There were a lot of trials and tribulations early in my career,” Billups told reporters during a news conference Saturday. “Some of those things [‘bust’ criticisms] were true at one point … But I never believed what people said about me.
“The passion I had for the game, I’d lived a clean life, I dedicated everything I had to the game – it just didn’t translate fast enough. [I] stayed focused, stayed humble … I just kept fighting, kept scratching. And it turned around.”
The young prospect out of Colorado was given up on by Boston, shipped to and away from Toronto, discarded even by his home state Nuggets. He got his legs under him in Minnesota, playing with good friend Kevin Garnett, but the Timberwolves had money tied up in veteran point guard Terrell Brandon and said goodbye to the free agent.
With the Pistons, Billups earned the nickname “Mr. Big Shot” for some of his clutch performances. He was Detroit’s coach on the floor, leading that ensemble squad to six consecutive Eastern Conference finals and Finals in 2004 and 2005.
There was churning late in his career, too – the Nuggets, the Knicks, the Clippers – but by then teams were seeking Billups rather than shedding him. Gone are the nights spent worrying about his next job, had the NBA stayed sour. Billups, 48, has been gainfully employed ever since, as a broadcaster after his playing days, then one year Clippers assistant and for the past three seasons as coach of the Portland Trail Blazers.
His tortuous route from disappointment to Hall of Famer prepared him well for his current gig. “One of the gifts” that led him to coach, Billups said.
“Because I’ve got a lot of different players at a lot of different places in their careers,” he said, “and I can say I’ve been every single one of those guys at one point. From a rookie who’s struggling to a guy taking the next step, from sixth man to best player, I’ve been it all.
NBA legends Chauncey Billups, Vince Carter, Michael Cooper and Walter Davis are among 13 inductees in the Class of 2024.
Carter’s arc looks almost like a mirror opposite. He burst on the NBA scene out of North Carolina, the No. 5 pick overall in 1998, and almost instantly became the face of the needy franchise in Toronto.
He was a runaway pick for Rookie of the Year and even picked up an MVP vote that spring. He became the Raptors’ first All-Star in Year 2, the guy who sparked them to their first postseason appearance and, a year later, helped them win their first playoff series.
It was Carter’s electrifying performance in the 2000 Slam Dunk contest at All-Star Weekend in Oakland that changed his public profile “overnight.” He started collecting nicknames: “Vinsanity,” “Air Canada,” “Half-Man, Half-Amazing.” By the first-round series against New York that spring, filmmaker/sideline fixture Spike Lee was razzing him – and sitting down when Carter passed that razzing on to Lee’s beloved Knicks.
Then Carter’s game, well, morphed. He seemed determined, though only in his mid-20s, to take his game outside. The rough landings that sometimes accompanied his above-the-rim highlights, no thanks. Before long, Carter wanted out of Toronto – and he got out, traded to New Jersey in December 2004 at age 27.
Carter made three of his eight All-Star appearances with the Nets but his last came in his ninth season – about the time Billups was getting going. In June 2009, he was traded to Orlando, the first of six teams for which he played after age 33.
Little did most people know that, from the point he joined the Magic, “Half-Man, Half-Amazing” was only half-finished. He kept on ticking, playing on for more than a decade.
After averaging 23.5 points and only once slipping below 20 points per game in his first 11 seasons, Carter averaged just 9.8 points over his final 11. The 6-foot-6 wing became a role player, got some Sixth Man votes, then was used as a deep reserve and a resident “old head,” spending time with Dallas, Memphis, Sacramento and Atlanta in his last seven years.
Graph out Carter’s and Billups’ job security and employment histories and you’d get crossed lines. What they shared was the resolve to keep going – one early, one late.
“I played the game because I loved it,” Carter, 47, said Saturday. “It wasn’t about chasing rings. You look at the stops that I had, they weren’t championship-caliber teams. But I went for an opportunity to play. I felt like I could still be a veteran. I could still share [knowledge].”
The fear of failure Billups faced early came at Carter as a refusal to fade. He spoke of his “want-to.”
“Willingness to do whatever it takes to last,” he said. “As you’re getting older, you have a list of 10, maybe 12 things you have to do [to stay capable of playing]. I was willing to stick to the script at 42, 43 years old, which is one of the hardest things to do.
“Because 12 things become 10 things. Then in a couple of months when you get tired of that, it becomes eight things. Now you’re cheating the game. Now you get injured.”
Every Hall class is full of such stories, maybe more so when the enshrinees aren’t necessarily GOAT or Mt. Rushmore candidates. For instance, Cooper – the tenacious pest who won five NBA titles with Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the “Showtime” Lakers – adapted his game as a teen when he saw how many coaches found minutes for good defenders.
Davis, with Phoenix and later Denver, flashed across the NBA sky like Carter, but as a silky shooter rather than a rim rattler. A six-time All-Star, his career was derailed by drug and alcohol issues. His call to the Hall comes 32 years after Davis last played – and 11 months after he died at age 69. Posthumously is the lousiest way to get honored, though Davis’ family values it highly.
Each Hall of Famer on the stage Sunday at Symphony Hall will have gotten there on their own timetable, with their specific influencers, on whatever talent, drive and patience it took. They were their own blueprints.
As Billups said, “It’s my journey. Everybody’s is totally different.
“From the time I was drafted to today, this weekend, it was a tough road for me. And there was not a lot of traffic on that road, to be honest with you. I learned so much about me. That process made me able to deal with anybody, able to meet anybody halfway, right?
“It kind of made me who I am.”
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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