(CNN)After 22 seasons in the NBA, Vince Carter is hanging up his threads and calling it a career.
The 43-year-old on Thursday announced that he is "officially done playing basketball professionally" on his podcast "Winging It With Vince Carter."
Carter had previously announced that the one-year deal he signed with the Atlanta Hawks for the 2019-2020 season would be his last. However, after the season was abruptly suspended on March 11 due to the pandemic, his playing career was left hanging in the balance.
The NBA announced plans to restart the season in July at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex near Orlando with 22 teams. However, the Hawks were one of the eight teams that were not invited due to its poor record.
"If there was any disappointment because of the season -- any of that -- it was kind of easier to put it aside and handle it that way," Carter said on his podcast. "It's like, OK, it's something bigger than my career.
"So, I was able to put the weird ending, the abrupt stoppage of play, to an ending aside for the bigger picture."
Carter began his career in 1998 with the Toronto Raptors, where he won Rookie of the Year in his first season. He would go on to make eight All-Star teams.
The high-flying guard was known for his acrobatic dunks, and he is widely considered one of the all-time great dunkers. He won the dunk contest in 2000 in one of the greatest showcases in league history.
Across his 22-season career, he played for the Toronto Raptors, New Jersey Nets, Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks, Memphis Grizzlies, Sacramento Kings and the Atlanta Hawks.
Vince Carter’s Ex-Wife Ellen Rucker
Vince Carter’s ex-wife Ellen Rucker is the sister of Antawn Jamison’s ex-wife, Lone Rucker. Together, they are starring in a new reality show on the WE channel called “Love Thy Sister.” I watched a bunch of promotional videos and trailers or whatever you call them. The show looks utterly unwatchable, frankly, though I’m sure people will watch it. The entire show “reality” looks scripted, and one video I watched was Antawn’s ex-wife Lone sitting down with one of their other sisters, named Londyn. At some point they start throwing wine at each other for no reason other than the producer probably asked them too.
Ellen is a chiropractor in a town called Lancaster in South Carolina. She’s been practicing there for ten years and owns the business. She’s currently dating a guy named named Bakari Sellers, who is a very young South Carolina congressman and a pretty big deal considering he was elected in 2006 at the age of 22. If there’s a congressman in the world you can begin to feel like trusting (not sure there is), it’s a young black guy from South Carolina. Generally speaking, the United States is not a place that empowers young black men. This guy seems seems pretty cool to me, and he seems like a real catch for Vince Carter’s ex-wife Ellen Rucker. They’ve been dating for about five years.
Ellen says her biggest disappointment was her divorce from Vince. They had been college sweethearts, and they had a kid together named Kai. She says she thought she knew Vince (she did for ten years) but in the end she didn’t. Ellen is quite a classy lady, to be sure, and I’m glad she’s with Congressman Sellers. If you want a little anecdote about her ex-husband: I went to a Celtics game about nine or ten years ago, and I was with a guy who had a real talent for getting under player’s skin and having them jawwing back at him. Of all the players who he heckled, Vince was by far the most animated and fiery. At one point, my friend had wondered aloud if Vince had recently spent some time playing for an Eastern European team (implying he wasn’t hacking it recently at the NBA level). Vince was yelling all sorts of stuff back to him. When he got substituted, he was sitting on the bench pointing to his ankle and trying to tell my friend that he was injured and so that’s why he wasn’t playing up to his potential. He also threw out a dumb insult about my friend’s mom. If you don’t use any swear words, you’re allowed to heckle the players as much as you want, and it helps if you have a really funny pal with you.
