RAPTORS VANQUISH VINCE, NEW JERSEY

Neil Acharya was on hand for the Toronto Raptors' big 90-78 win over Vince Carter and the New Jerseys last night, and he shares his thoughts.

Vince Carter actually does have some supporters at the Air Canada Centre. There were plenty of fans who wore his old No. 15 Raptors jersey last night -- I even saw one with the dinosaur on it -- but most of those fans are usually under the age of 15, and are too young or were too young to comprehend the actions of Vince.

The only excuse for respecting Vince Carter as a basketball player is if you are under 15 years old, know him personally or if he visited your school.

Many in the media, along with Carter himself, his teammates and many people in the NBA like to insinuate that Canada was a basketball wasteland before Carter came to Toronto in 1999. You can hear the subtext in how they say it -- in those days, Canadians supposedly didn't know what a double-dribble was and had never heard of any basketball player beyond Michael Jordan.

It’s absolute rubbish. Many Canadians Neate and myself’s age sought out the NBA long before the Raptors, and loved it. I was a Cleveland Cavaliers fan at one point. I even remember watching the shot that afternoon in 1989 and I hated Jordan for a long time afterward. When the Raps entered the NBA, people were happy they could finally have their own team to support.

Vince never was, and never will be the player that schooled Canadian fans about NBA basketball. There is no such player. There the need never existed. Plain and simple, he was the face of the franchise for a few years and instead of sticking it out under poor management, he decided to skip town when the going got tough.

Try and find another NBA arena where the return of a former player two years later will still result in chants raining down like last night’s "Carter Sucks." The funny thing is, it still may get worse for Carter, especially if he ever has to play a playoff game here one day.

It took 728 days -- Sunday is the two-year anniversary of the Carter trade -- but Raptors fans finally got the sweetly satisfying win over the Nets that they’ve been waiting for. Perhaps Toronto sports fans should have known something was in the air when the scoring was opened by No. 15 of the Raptors, Jorge Garbajosa. Number 15 on Dec. 15, no less.

Carter, meantime, had a horrid night, hitting just one of his first 10 shots and forcing things all night. Meantime, the Raptors, with Chris Bosh sidelined, played good team basketball, with T.J. Ford keeping everyone involved on offence and hitting some big shots down the stretch.

Carter's three previous visits to the ACC as a member of the Nets have all been disappointing – for Raptors fans. His first game back, the fans were vicious, but Carter played big and the Nets won the game.

The next game was a lopsided affair early last season. No one seemed to care much. It was the darkest days of the Rob Babcock era and most of Carter’s former teammates seemed happy to welcome him back and perhaps more than a few wished they had been shipped off too.

The third time Carter came back, last January, the ACC came to life, as the Raptors were poised to stick it to Vince, but he was the one who stuck it to them, hitting a last-second game-winning three-pointer. He also managed to get Mo Pete kicked out of that game by playfully slapping him.

So yes, the Raptors dealing Vince and the Nets a loss was part of a great trifecta for Toronto sports fans on Friday, since the Leafs beat Carolina and Vernon Wells signed a contract extension with the Blue Jays.