SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — 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 practiced 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 6 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, when Toronto made the playoffs for the first time.
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,” said Kelly Olynyk, who also plays for the Raptors. "That effect is huge.”
The NBA was no sure thing to succeed in Canada, where hockey is king, when the Raptors began play as an expansion team in 1995. In fact, the Vancouver Grizzlies, the other team to debut that season, lasted only six seasons north of the border before moving to Memphis.
But after three straight losing seasons to begin their existence, the Raptors acquired the rights to Carter at the 1998 NBA draft. They finished just four games under .500 in his first season, then reached the playoffs for the first time in his second.
Carter looks back at his time in Toronto, where he had veterans such as Charles Oakley as teammates, as the place he learned the habits that would help him become the only player in NBA history to play in four decades.
“I had a great support system. I had veterans and I was willing to ask questions,” Carter said Saturday at a news conference to discuss his induction Sunday into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “I was willing to ask questions because I wanted to learn.”
Many of the core players on the Canadian team that reached the quarterfinals in Paris were too young to remember watching Carter, though players who were in the NBA earlier such as Olynyk, Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph may have.
“A lot of my friends and even some older people, we wanted to play basketball so much because of the Raptors and Vince and the excitement it brought,” Olynyk said. “Now you’re seeing that my age group now have kids, and they’re putting their kids into basketball because they were basketball fans. Now the whole effect is multigenerational.”
Though there was anger from the Raptors and their fans toward Carter after he pushed to be traded, things have been soothed now. The team will retire his jersey this season and recently unveiled a revitalized Vince Carter Court at a park in Toronto.
“I think it’s really special, very special for him that he’s going to be honored in the Hall of Fame,” said Nets coach Jordi Fernandez, who coached Canada's national team, “and very special for Canadian basketball that they could enjoy such a great player and watch him play in the NBA for a long time.”
AP freelance writer Ian Harrison in Toronto contributed to this report.
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FILE - Toronto Raptors' Vince Carter dunks during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Toronto, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004. (AP Photo/Aaron Harris, File)
Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2024 inductee Vince Carter gestures during a hall of fame news conference at Mohegan Sun, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, in Uncasville, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli strike on the central Gaza Strip killed a family of eight, Palestinian medical officials said Sunday, as Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants in the territory's north and airstrikes destroyed a century-old market in southern Lebanon.
The strike in Gaza late Saturday hit a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing parents and their six children, who ranged in age from 8 to 23, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah, where the bodies were taken.
It said a further seven people were wounded, including two women and a child in critical condition. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies.
A year into the war with Hamas, Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets in Gaza nearly every day. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas and other armed groups because they operate in densely populated areas. In recent months, it has repeatedly struck schools being used as shelters by displaced people, accusing militants of hiding among them.
Israel is waging air and ground campaigns against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and is expected to strike Iran in retaliation for a missile attack earlier this month, though it has not said how or when. Iran supports both militant groups and has said it will respond to any Israeli attack.
In northern Gaza, Israeli air and ground forces have been attacking Jabaliya, where the military says militants have regrouped. Over the past year, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the built-up refugee camp, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation, and other areas.
Israel has ordered the full evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City. An estimated 400,000 people remain in the north after a mass evacuation ordered in the opening weeks of the war. The Palestinians fear Israel intends to permanently depopulate the north to establish military bases or Jewish settlements there. The United Nations says no food has entered northern Gaza since Oct. 1.
The military confirmed Saturday that hospitals were included in the evacuation orders but said it had not set a specific timetable. It said a medical convoy scheduled to transfer patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital in recent days was canceled for security reasons — without elaborating — but that the convoy had delivered fuel to the hospital on Saturday.
Dr. Mohamed Salha, director of the Awda hospital, said it was among three hospitals in the north, including Kamal Adwan, that had received small shipments of fuel that would only last for a matter of days. He said they also need medicine and medical supplies.
He said casualties are still streaming in and his hospital alone is doing 12 to 15 operations a day.
Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service, said there are a “large number of martyrs” still uncollected from the streets and under the rubble.
“We are unable to reach them,” he told The Associated Press, adding that street dogs are eating some of the remains.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Around 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's bombardment and ground invasions of Gaza have killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, and left much of the territory in ruins. Palestinian medical officials do not say whether those killed by Israeli forces are militants or civilians, but say women and children make up over half the fatalities. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
Israeli airstrikes destroyed an Ottoman-era market in the southern city of Nabatiyeh overnight, killing at least one person and wounding four more. Lebanon's Civil Defense said it battled fires in 12 residential buildings and 40 shops in the market, which dates back to 1910.
“Our livelihoods have all been leveled to the ground,” said Ahmad Fakih, whose corner shop was destroyed.
Rescuers were searching for survivors and remains in the pancaked buildings early Sunday as Israeli drones buzzed overhead. Nabatiyeh was one of dozens of communities across southern Lebanon that Israel has warned people to evacuate, even as the city hosts people who have already fled.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is allied with Hamas, began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, drawing retaliatory airstrikes. The conflict dramatically escalated in September with a wave of Israeli strikes that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his senior commanders. Israel launched a ground operation into southern Lebanon earlier this month.
In a separate incident, the Lebanese Red Cross said paramedics were searching for casualties in the wreckage of a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon on Sunday when a second strike left four paramedics with concussions and damaged two ambulances.
It said the rescue operation had been coordinated with U.N. peacekeepers, who informed the Israeli side. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israeli forces have repeatedly fired upon first responders and U.N. peacekeepers since the start of the ground operation. The military has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to ferry fighters and weapons and says Hezbollah operates in the vicinity of the peacekeepers, without providing evidence.
At least 2,255 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of the conflict, including more than 1,400 people since September, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry, which does not say how many were Hezbollah fighters. At least 54 people have been killed in the rocket attacks on Israel, nearly half of them soldiers.
Iran, which supports Hezbollah and Hamas, launched around 180 ballistic missiles at Israel to avenge the killing of Nasrallah; an Iranian general who was with him; and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who died in an explosion in Iran's capital in July that was widely blamed on Israel.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut and Natalie Melzer in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed.
Find more of AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Hezbollah rescue workers stand on the rubble of destroyed buildings at commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in NAbatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
A Hezbollah rescue worker, left, and a Lebanese Civil Defence worker, right, stand on the rubble of destroyed buildings at commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in NAbatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Hezbollah rescue workers search for victims on the rubble of destroyed buildings at commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
A man walks amid destroyed buildings at a commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Destroyed buildings at a commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, are seen in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Lebanese man Ahmad Fakih checks his destroyed coffeeshop at a commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Hezbollah rescue workers search for victims amid the rubble of destroyed buildings at commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Hezbollah rescue workers search for victims on a destroyed building at commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Hezbollah rescue workers search for victims on the rubble of destroyed buildings at commercial street that was hit Saturday night by Israeli airstrikes, in NAbatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
