Vince Carter played only a short time in Canada. His impact on Canadian basketball still goes strong

Even though Vince Carter played only a short time in Canada, his impact on Canadian basketball is still going strong.

Those kids who watched him play in Toronto, who dreamed of wearing a jersey with a dinosaur on their chest, who maybe didn't realize yet that no matter how hard they practised at school or in the park would never dunk like Carter, are all grown up now.

They have made Canada's national team one of the best in the world, the best it's ever been, and many of them point to the new Hall of Famer as the reason they picked the sport that was never No. 1 in their country.

"Everybody that really plays basketball in this country knows who Vince Carter is," Raptors forward RJ Barrett said. "What he's done for the game is huge."

With 2024 NBA MVP runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and 2023 NBA champion Jamal Murray leading the way, Canada had 10 NBA players on its roster in the Olympics, the most of any country other than the U.S.

Carter spent the first six 1/2 of his NBA-record 22 seasons with the Raptors. He was the 1999 rookie of the year in his first season and an all-star and the slam dunk champion in his second.

He also won a gold medal during the summer of 2000, when his dunk over France's Frederic Weis became one of the biggest highlights in Olympic basketball history, and a U.S. team with NBA players had still never been beaten.

Fast forward to last year, when Canada not only won bronze for its first men's basketball medal in the World Cup of Basketball, but did it by beating the U.S. in the third-place game.

The Canadians had gone from watching Carter play to playing like Carter.

"You're seeing a lot of kids — I was one of them — who went into their backyards and tried to emulate what he did on the court,"