The last time Vince Carter was a Toronto Raptor YouTube hadn’t been invented yet, among other things, which is a little like Dorothy Parker living before Twitter. On Tuesday, Vince returned to Toronto again, on a seventh different team since he left his greatest and only enduring NBA home. He’s 41, all of a sudden. Is this the last time he comes back? Will he finally retire, 15 years after he left in search of a happier place to be?

“I honestly don’t know,” said Carter in a morning scrum before his ... Atlanta Hawks? … lost 104-101 to the Raptors, and he missed a halfcourt shot to tie it at the buzzer. “I’m so up and down with it … I would like to come back and play, and then next month, I’ll probably say, this is it. It’s just one of those things, when you get close to the end, doing something you love for so long: for me it’s one of those final decisions that’s tough to make until the last minute.”

If he plays 36 of the 44 games left in Atlanta’s nowhere season he will pass Moses Malone, Kevin Garnett and Karl Malone for fifth in career NBA games. Asked if there was anything new left for him, Carter remembered to mention a championship before talking about being tied with Robert Parish, Garnett and Vince’s onetime Raptors teammate Kevin Willis with a record 21 seasons played. It sounds like he’d like to break that record.

He’s mostly a body now, a likeable veteran three-point shooter who can still uncork a dunk in the pre-game that set the internet ablaze in quiet, nostalgic ways. But Vince can’t stop.

“You know, I talk to Kevin Willis a lot and I apologize to Kevin a lot because I used to make fun of him when he was here,” said Carter. “I was like man, what are you doing? Why? And he was like, I love it, I love it. We talk about that every time. Just, the love of the game. I always see a lot of people saying ‘Why, you’re older, you’re this, you’re that, you’ve seen it all, you’ve accomplished whatever. Why?’ And it’s just, I love it. I love it.

“I’m just not tired of it. It’s hard work and it’s a little tougher than it was 10 years go, but I still enjoy the grind. I don’t mind flying late on the plane, or four games in five nights. I can’t imagine not doing it.”

So he keeps going. He has never admitted he quit on Toronto, regardless of whether he was right to. Nobody was ever booed more here, and he still doesn’t like it when it’s brought up.

“Why are we talking about it? Why are we talking about the old? Why can’t we just live in the moment,” said Carter, who had six points on 2-of-6 shooting in 13 minutes of play, but nearly sent the game to overtime. “I’m not a guy who likes to look back, I’m not living in that. I’ve had the opportunity to play so many years and see so many things, and go through ups and downs, and the joy of stepping in this arena each and every year is something I always look forward to. And that’s something that’s never going to change, whether I was being booed or not. I enjoy playing in this arena, and obviously it’s icing of the cake in terms of (fans being) appreciative of it, but I just, I think what you do as a human being, you set yourself for all the other crap when you worry about the past. Worry about the future. The future’s now, and it’s positive.

“Everything’s moving forward. The organization here is doing unbelievable things, they have an MVP candidate in my opinion in Kawhi (Leonard), great fan base, the city has just grown, everything’s good. Why look back?”

He is happy to daydream about the good times, but the bad times can still strike a nerve. It’s a testament to his longevity that he’s survived almost long enough to outlast the argument over his departure. The argument, in emotion and duration, has always been proof Vince is the biggest star the franchise has ever had.

“For me, when I first got here 5 1/2 years ago and you’d bump into people on the street and they’d say ‘Oh you’re with the Raptors? Oh, we love Vince Carter’ would be the next sentence out of their mind,” says Raptors coach Nick Nurse. “His name is synonymous with Toronto Raptors basketball. I mean, seriously, he left an impression.”

DeMar DeRozan was a fan of the Raptors growing up because of Vince. Tristan Thompson once told Vince that for Canadian kids, so many of whom are now in the NBA, he was their Michael Jordan. Vince, along with James Naismith and Steve Nash, is perhaps the most significant figure in Canadian basketball history.

But he left for what became a near-endless road. New Jersey was stranded in a swamp with half a fan base, and after he left the Nets moved to Brooklyn anyway. He never spent long anywhere else: a cameo in Orlando; three years in Dallas. Three years in Memphis on also-ran playoff teams. A year in the wilderness of Sacramento, and now one in the ashes of Atlanta.

He never found a home like Toronto. He once told me, “There was nothing better. I will say that.”

And every year he returns to a Raptors franchise with bigger aspirations, a deeper fan base, a wider reach, a more significant footprint in a city where some of the kids who watched Vince now have kids of their own. Ask Vince his favourite memories here and he talks about being drafted, winning rookie of the year, the dunk contest. He added one more.

“Representing Toronto in the all-star game as leading vote-getter, it doesn’t get any better than that,” said Vince. “When some elite superstars were still in the game. I can say that at one point I had more votes that Michael Jordan. I did. You can’t beat that.”

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Strange bar to set, but maybe it’s that he was never better loved. Vince got a standing ovation when he entered the game in the first quarter, this time; people cheered when he hit a three. Maybe he’s trying to find his legacy in a career that peaked so young; maybe he just can’t imagine life on the outside.

Either way, he’s never found one home, but instead found one in the arenas and airports, in the hotels and the practice gyms, in the late flights and tough mornings and years that keep marching on. Vince Carter left Toronto, and the more times he returns the more you realize, at some point he wasn’t looking for something better anymore. He was never going to find it, anyway. So he looked for something else, and he just never stopped.

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