Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady Watch Their Own Highlights All the Time

Now you look at the game, it’s copycat. Everybody is really playing the same, but you don’t really have the personnel to play the style of basketball you’re playing. That’s what drives me crazy: Why are you putting him in that position where he is not really excelling, but he will be his best at this position? You’re trying to make him into something that it’s going to take him a long time to figure out, when he could be really good for you right now over here.

Carter: Keeping up with the Joneses.

McGrady: Yeah. Man, that’s the most frustrating part to me.

On that note, did either of you ever think about coaching?

McGrady: No. He did, though.

Carter: I mean, I did. I have. But I just look at the league, and the lack of loyalty to coaches [from players] now is what’s concerning to me. I know the approach now is to have more compassion for the players, but I felt like if a coach wasn’t yelling at me, getting after me, he did not care. That’s just all I know. And I feel like you respond as an athlete to that and you learn from that because it’s all coming from a positive place, a pure place. Now, you do that and the first thing they’re thinking is, like, “Hey, I need to go to the management.” Obviously, it’s an adjustment. So, it’s cool being the coach on TV. [Laughs.]

Do you ever watch your own highlights?

Carter: Yeah.

McGrady: You can’t help but see it now. And sometimes, I just need to see 21-year-old Mac. [Laughs.]

Carter: [Laughs.] You gotta remind yourself!

McGrady: Absolutely, I go back, man. Hell yeah, I watch my highlights, for sure.

Carter: And you can’t help but see it because of social media today. People are reminiscing about what we’ve done and they’ll tag us. The funniest thing to me is when people will say, like, “Hey, remember when you were in Houston and you played against Dallas and you dunked on Shawn Bradley? You remember that?”

McGrady: Yeah, I did it! I remember everything about it!

Carter: That’s the thing that we get now. So you can’t help but see it, but at the same time, it’s great to see it, because at some point, people don’t hit you up and reminisce anymore.

You’ve both returned to Toronto quite a bit since retiring. How has the city changed since your playing days?

McGrady: I mean, we’re talking 20-something years later, times are way different now than it was back then. The sell back then was, the people in Toronto are nice and it’s a great organization, how they treated us.

Carter: It was a clean city, multicultural, beautiful people, good food, nightclubs, anything you want.

McGrady: But now, I mean, you got Drake involved. You got the infrastructure that’s been built downtown. We didn’t have all of that when we were there—the OVO Athletic Centre, all of that. My first year, we were driving like 30 minutes, 40 minutes outside the city to go to Scarborough for practice, because our practice facility wasn’t built yet.