Vince Carter Q&A: On the Hawks’ playoff chances, De’Andre Hunter, Cam Reddish and retirement

The added free time Vince Carter now has since he retired from the NBA has given him an opportunity to slash his golf handicap from a 12, which is what it was during last season, to a 6. In between broadcasting select Hawks games for Bally Sports Southeast and working full-time for ESPN, Carter is likely on a golf course in Atlanta, which is where he still resides.

The Athletic caught up with Carter after Sunday’s game against the Golden State Warriors to talk about retirement, if he’s still OK with how his career ended and his thoughts on this year’s Hawks team.

Here’s our conversation with Carter, which has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

What’s been your favorite part of retirement so far? 

Free time. Golfing. I really don’t do much. I really don’t like the idle time. That’s why I chose to go straight into broadcasting. I’m working full-time for ESPN, so I’m busy with them now, and I’m OK with that.

Has there been a point in the past year where you’ve missed playing the game?

No, and it’s kind of weird. Well, I’ll say this, I didn’t know what to expect when I originally retired. In your mind, you think you still want to play or you think is there something left in there? Yes, I could have played. It’s tough to explain. It’s kind of one of those things where — yes, I could have still played, but I don’t miss it at the same time. I think it’s out of me, but it’s one of those things where if I played, that feeling still would have been there, but I’m at a point now where I can put it down and put on a different hat and go about my life. I think my first (Hawks) game broadcasting was the Nets game on the road (in January). I remember walking in here and everyone here was like, ‘Oh, man, do you miss it? How do you feel?’ I needed to see how it was when the teams were actually in the arena and I could actually see the guys. That was that Lakers game. And I was excited about being up here in the booth and calling the game and talking about the game on this level. I feel good now.

That last game you played here was your final game. We didn’t know it at the time, obviously, but I remember asking you how you would feel if it ended that way. I know your family wasn’t here and you weren’t able to get a proper sendoff. You said you were going to be at peace, though. Looking back on it a year later, do you still feel at peace with how it ended for you? 

Well, I’ll tell you this: Yes. And I think golf and broadcasting and doing other things has helped me. It didn’t initially. Once the lockout hit, I was able to golf. That was easy because there’s only one person in the cart and I could golf all day. That’s been my pastime. I was still working out and staying ready just in case we got the opportunity to play in the bubble. That was what I was doing in between the time we knew we weren’t going to go to Orlando. That’s how I was approaching it. I wasn’t really worried about how it ended. In my mind, I didn’t think we were getting the opportunity. It would have been a pleasant surprise if all 30 teams got to go. In my mind, I felt like it wasn’t going to happen, so it was easy to put the doubt down and just kind of coast mentally, as far as if there might be an opportunity to go back and play. Once it got down to that decision where it was 22 teams were going, it was easy because I was already mentally there.

You still miss the other side of it. You miss the guys. I still keep in contact with a lot of the guys, not only just here, but (Kent) Bazemore and different guys around the league. I’ve just been talking to guys who’ve been through the process to help when I need it. It’s been fun though. You just miss the locker room talk,s and it’s cool to now be able to work with guys like Bob (Rathbun) and Dominique (Wilkins) who I’ve worked with over the past few seasons to still give a little bit of that feeling.

I wanted to ask you about this team. Last season, you guys were 20-47 and these guys are 26-24 and fourth in the East. Has the rise, at all, surprised you, especially from the younger guys? 

It has. The organization wanted to put the young guys in the fire and have them grow, learn, and they’ve done that. They’ve implemented, in my opinion, more veterans for these guys to learn from. A lot of these guys are younger. Cam has been injured. John is injured right now, but now you can implement more veterans on the court around the younger guys, and they can now see how it’s supposed to be done. You want them to learn it, of course, but sometimes it’s good to see it first and then you go out there and work your way through what you’ve seen and then you mold into what you are. It’s been fun to watch this group. It really has.

I know he’s been hurt, but I know you helped take De’Andre (Hunter) under your wing last year. There were many games last season where he was kind of invisible out there. He seems like a totally different player now. What do you think has changed? 

One hundred percent, he’s changed. One of the questions I asked him earlier in the season after one of these games was: What has been the change for you this season? I think you make the jump and the progression in between your first and second year. That first year, you’re kind of treading lightly and on eggshells because you don’t know which way is up sometimes. Now, in Year 2, he knows how to train because he knows what to expect in season. Everything he goes through from September on, he’s familiar with it. It’s not like, ‘I think this is how you do it.’ It’s now, ‘I know this is what I need to do.’ I think that’s the big jump. He’s also just really committed to this. You could tell he worked on his game. I also think his confidence is there. I think, more than anything, you could see the confidence in his game from the first preseason game. It’s like you can just see it, how he believes in himself now. It was in there. I felt like he was going to be something. I really felt like he could end up being a special two-way player.

What specifically did you see in him last season that made you feel that way?

You could just see how he works on a daily basis. He asked questions. He listened. He’s transparent when he doesn’t know something. We used to laugh and joke and rag on each other, but he was the guy you could talk to and you knew he was going to listen. He may not respond because he was close to a mute, as you probably know. This year, he’s yelling after dunks and it’s like, ‘Who are you?’ It’s all about being comfortable. It’s basketball, but it’s a new world for him playing basketball. It’s one thing playing in high school and then getting to college, but now you’re fulfilling a dream and doing everything that comes with it and sometimes, as veterans, we tell these young guys to remember that it’s just basketball. It’s easy to forget though when you’re telling it to these guys that I’ve done it for 22 years. He’s going through it, and he was 22 days into it. It’s not just basketball yet. It’s basketball, but it’s basketball in a dream world. That fades off eventually, but, really, my hat is off for him for what he’s shown this year.

Cam is another guy with who you worked a lot last season. I know you were trying to help him with his footwork on his 3-point shooting. He hasn’t started well this season. What do you see when you’ve watched him this year? 

As last season wore on, he got better. He’s always had that defensive mindset. Defensively, he’s great. You see more confidence in him on that end. I listened to one of his interviews when he was talking about guarding LeBron. He said he wanted to make it tough for him. You could probably attest to this from talking with him, but last year he would say, ‘I am gonna go out there, and whatever happens happens.’ This year, he said, ‘I’m going to go out there and stop him.’ It’s confidence. Confidence is really important. You can ask a guy month-to-month, week-to-week and ask what’s changed? It might be just seeing a shot go in or fixing something or seeing three shots go in, and it can make all of the difference. It’s all about confidence with him. He’ll get there.

What do you think about the potential of this team this season and moving forward? 

I think, right now, if I’m part of the organization, I don’t even talk about the long term. You live in the now because the experience these guys can get if they pull this off and make it to the playoffs is huge. That’s going to do a lot for the franchise moving forward because they’ll get what this franchise has been preaching. Lloyd (Pierce) said it last year and I know some of you guys were like, wait, playoffs? He believed it because the lessons they’ve learned through the rough season was building something. It was all about the next season. Some guys, it takes a little longer. You could see the potential, and he believed it. We were at a point last year, regardless of the record, where we felt like we were close to stringing together a couple of wins together. I felt like we were gonna get there. I felt that our young guys — because they were so used to winning and came from winning programs, they were like, ‘Nah.’ You could just feel it. They wouldn’t say it, but you could feel it. The approach is different this year because they understand how the NBA works, and it’s possible now.

Lloyd said this team was going to make the playoffs — do you remember that awful Memphis game where you guys lost by like 40? That following practice Lloyd said this team was going to make the playoffs. In my mind, I was like, what the hell? You guys were just embarrassed last night. Why are you saying this?

I was like, ‘Are you gonna say that? You’re gonna say that? You’re gonna say that?’ But, for him, it was like a mind game that he was playing. Believe in yourself. Believe that you can do that. We were capable of doing it. Sometimes, I think last year, the young guys were like, ‘Bruh, we stink. We just lost by 40. We stink. You see what just happened to us?’ He was trying to instill confidence in them. You can always poke, poke, poke but until you get it, your poking is just there and you don’t know what it means. It’s like, I feel you, but I don’t know what this is. If you go back and ask these guys now if they understand what he was trying to get at, I think they would — I would hope — that they understand what he was trying to do. He was trying to pull that out of them. He was trying to change that mentality to believe. As bad as that game was, he wanted us to believe that we were a playoff team, so let’s try to have that mentality whether we make it or not. Even if they thought he was crazy or not, he was trying to change their approach and the mentality.

My final question for you that I wanted to ask you, I know you didn’t play for Roy Williams (Carter played for Dean Smith) at UNC, but what was your relationship like with Roy over the years and what did he mean to you?

So, Roy was at Kansas when I was in school. The one thing I loved about Roy is he used to reach out to me before every season with a hand-written note. He would send something. I would get like a media guide. I would get something, without fail, before every season began. It was amazing to make me feel like I played for him, and I didn’t. He recruited me at Kansas. He would always wish me good luck, and he would always reach out whenever I did anything noteworthy. We talk about the brotherhood, and that word is always thrown around in college. He’s a true believer in that. He did a great job of keeping that intact by reaching out. He kept us connected. I sent him a note thanking him for accepting me as one of his own and just being in my corner. He just did a great job of keeping everyone in the Carolina family together. He came to one of our games when we were in Charlotte, and none of his current guys were playing in the game. When I was in Sacramento, he came to a game in Charlotte to see Justin Jackson and myself. But my first year here in Atlanta, he came to Charlotte to see me. That’s just how great of a guy he is and how supportive he was of UNC. I don’t know if you watched his press conference, but you could see how important that is to him. It’s just unbelievable how he made us all feel like family, and I didn’t even play for him.