It’ll be 10 years ago in May that the Raptors came within a 20-foot jumper of the Eastern Conference final, and perhaps you’ll recall the scene.

Dell Curry threw the inbounds pass. Charles Oakley set the screen. Vince Carter, who caught Curry’s feed in the left corner with two seconds left in that memorable Game 7 in Philadelphia, pump-faked, squared and let fly. Then he waited a long beat to see where fate’s arc would take him.

“I remember the play like it was yesterday,” Curry was saying this week. “Vince had more time than he thought. He had a good pump fake, got (Tyrone Hill) off his feet. But I thought he rushed it just a little bit . . . ”

You know too well how it turned out, how the most important shot in the history of the franchise landed long. Still, it’s sometimes hard to believe, almost a decade on, that the times never got better for either the Raptors or for the most spectacularly talented player they’ve ever employed.

Toronto’s NBA franchise has only been to the playoffs three times since then, all first-round flameouts, and when they’ll return with any hope of winning a series is hard to see. And as for Carter, while it’s true only a select few NBA players wouldn’t swap his career for theirs — he has earned more than $130 million in pre-tax salary, and he’s an eight-time all-star — there will always be a sense that he never truly unlocked his full potential.

If he came close, it was in 2000-01. His third season was the only one in which he earned a spot on the all-NBA second team (he never made the first team). It was also the year he put up his highest career total in player efficiency rating (PER), a convenient assessment of an all-around game. That season, the only NBAer to score a higher PER was Shaquille O’Neal of the champion L.A. Lakers.

Why did Vinsanity peak so early? Wear and tear was a factor. His knees took a beating. And the off-seasons in which he infamously shirked serious workouts stacked up.

But it also came down to this: As explosive as Carter could be — he famously followed Allen Iverson’s 52-point performance in a Game 2 win with a 50-point outburst that propelled Toronto to a 2-1 series lead against the Sixers — his fuse didn’t light itself.

Former Raptors coach Butch Carter, speaking over the line from Orlando this week, was philosophical about what made Air Canada fly.

“Some guys are motivated from being poor. Some guys are motivated like Oakley, they play at a small black college and no one ever thought he’d be able to play in the NBA,” Butch Carter said. “Vince came from an environment where he had a mother and a male figure in the home; he had three good meals, a very clean and educated home.

“He had been told it was okay to be who he was. He was very good being what he was. The thing was, I just felt he could have been better.”

Maybe nobody emboldened Vince to be better as skillfully as Butch Carter and the cadre of veteran players that surrounded the young star in his first few seasons in the league. Alas, the situation was fleeting. Butch Carter’s run ended eventfully after the first-round loss to the Knicks in 2000. The folks who ran the franchise, more intent on indulging Vince Carter than challenging him, allowed him to attend a graduation ceremony on the morning of the biggest game in franchise history, a stage mother’s bad idea.

And after Carter missed in the big moment, Toronto’s executive branch clanked. There was the free-agent signing of a past-due Hakeem Olajuwon, the trading of Oakley, the entrance of Rob Babcock as GM. It went on.

Carter quit on Toronto, had a minor renaissance in New Jersey, moved on to Orlando with high hopes. But the Magic gave up on him this past December, when they dealt him to Phoenix, and he’ll arrive in Toronto for Friday’s game against the Raptors aged 34 and waning. The Suns are expected to exercise their right to buy out the final year of his current contract next season for less than a quarter of its $18 million value. The kid they called Half Man, Half Amazing is a step removed from becoming a full-on journeyman.

Butch Carter, for his part, spent a few minutes this week thinking back to his favourite moment of Vinsanity. It was January 2000. The roster for the U.S. Olympic team had just been announced. The Americans had left Carter off the team in favour of a shooting guard named Ray Allen. (Carter, of course, would get to those Games and be the MVP of a gold-medal squad).

A coach remembered speaking to his team in the locker room before the tipoff.

“All I said was, ‘I don’t know who’s guarding this guy, Allen, but people clearly don’t think he can play for his country,’” Butch Carter recalled.

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It was Vince Carter, of course, who would guard Allen. It was Vince Carter, excited, who would out-score Allen, 47 points to 25.

As Butch Carter said of his best player that night: “I still think we’re only seeing 60 per cent of what he can do.”

As it turned out, we were seeing precisely 100 per cent of what Carter wanted to give. Seen a decade on, it looks thrilling and unfulfilling all at once.

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