STOP THE VINSANITY: WE DON'T WANT A CARTER COMEBACK IN T-DOT

We're kicking ourselves, since we didn't spot this yesterday when it was it was reported in the Metro free commuter daily by the always unimpeachable Marty York: Vince Carter is supposed to be interested in returning to the Toronto Raptors when his contract's up.

It coulda-woulda-shoulda been our scoop since Neil and me both commute to work via public transit. Long story short, The Rim Job picked it up, then it made to Deadspin.

Vince coming back? Let's pray not. On all things Raptor-related, we of course to defer to RaptorBlog and there Scott Carefoot panned it as the work of "some sketchy journalists." Quote Scott:

"You know that guy who got dumped by his girlfriend years ago but is still friends with her and lets her call him in the middle of the night and cry on his shoulder at Starbucks when her new boyfriend treats her like crap? That's exactly how I see people who entertain the notion that Vince Carter will ever wear a Raptors uniform again. It is so completely beyond the realm of plausibility that I would sooner believe that LeBron James will sign a mid-level deal with the Raptors when his contract with the Cavs expires. He's never coming back. Never. Ever. Neverino. Got it? Good."

Or as Neil put it in his Raptors preview, the Raptors have moved on: "One of the most significant things to happen (in the off-season) was when (Bryan) Colangelo handed off No.15 to reserve centre Jorge Garbajosa . This simple gesture was in fact a grand statement by the astute and soon to be best dressed in Toronto nominee, Colangelo.
Firstly, it marks the dawn of a new era, where hard work and playing as a team is at the core of Raptor basketball, as embodied by lunch-pail types such as Garbajosa. Secondly, the Raptors will no longer live in the shadow of you-know-who, the guy we traded to New Jersey."

As for Marty York, don't get us started. The guy was kind of a Canadian, pre-Internet version of Jay Mariotti. As a star Globe & Mail columnist in the '90s, he was widely (sometimes wildly) vilified, his credibility and ethics often questioned, and he often caused a ruckus since as his one-time colleague Stephen Brunt once put it, he tended to give a black-and-white picture "that didn't reflect the usually grey truth."

There's a 1992 article from the Ryerson Review of Journalism that captures how York was an outcast among the journalists and the jocks alike. It seems to presage how York's gone from Canada's national newspaper to a rag that people read on the bus or TTC so they don't end up making eye contact with strangers.

The one quote that sticks out is one of his editors saying that York was occasionally so far ahead on a story that it didn't seem believable.

Pretty flimsy, yes, but that's one reason not to dismiss this completely out of hand.

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New Jersey Nets preview (Oct. 31)