Compare and Contrast

This is the perfect article in the Toronto Star this morning by Dave Feschuk. He's comparing my favourite Raptor (Alvin Williams) and a good player with no heart (Vince Carter). Have a read

Alvin shows true grit
DAVE FESCHUK

A recent U.S. magazine article says that Michelle Carter, Vince's mother and business manager, pities Raptors general manager Glen Grunwald.

It's not Grunwald's lame-duck contract status that's the subject of her compassion. It's Grunwald's pronounced limp, the result of injuries sustained as a promising basketball star that have left him, according to the article, physically unable to play with his 18-month-old son.

The point is that Ms Carter sees Grunwald hobbling around the Air Canada Centre and wishes no such post-career fate for her eldest son.

"I tell Vince to listen to his body. You're Vince, I say, not invincible," she is quoted as saying in the March 1 issue of ESPN The Magazine. "I don't want him to live for this moment. I want him to live for a moment in 2012."

Carter, the No. 1 Raptor, was presumably living for 2012 again last night, sitting in street clothes to preserve the left ankle he sprained eight days ago. His talent-challenged mates, meanwhile, made as though it was 1912, scoring a Paleozoic 28 points in a first half that recalled the era of dirt courts and peach-bushel baskets. Toronto's 76-74 loss to the Washington Wizards, filled as it was with bush-league bumbling, didn't set the NBA back a century, but it came close.

That's partly because Carter wasn't alone in civvies. Jalen Rose was nursing his broken shooting hand. And Alvin Williams missed his second straight with a flare-up to the right knee that has hindered him, among many other injuries, for most of the past three seasons.

Somebody asked Williams if he looked at Grunwald and worried that he'd be similarly hobbled in 10 years. "Ten years might not even get here," he said. "If I can never walk again because of what I love to do, that's a chance I'll take. I'll die on the court. That's what I want to do. That's how I want to play."

There's perhaps no starker contrast in NBA constitutions than the one between Raptors Carter and Williams. Carter is the middle-class momma's boy who has a reputation for collapsing at the hint of contact.

Williams is the inner-city tough guy who often staggers through games in a manner that suggests he's one step away from his career's crippled end.

Said Williams yesterday: "I played when I was hurt when I was young. I play when I'm hurt now. (Basketball's) the only thing I ever loved."

No one's saying Carter isn't injured and Williams is a hero for only submitting to a sit-down because he admittedly "can't run, jump, cut (or) backpedal." But if you watched the home bench during last night's game, you saw Carter smiling and laughing at least a couple of times. Williams looked glum.

The optics suggested that Carter cared little about a game in which he had no statistical stake; that Williams was sincere when he said before the game, "It hurts me not to play."

There has been no urgency in Carter's voice when he has pondered his return to action. "When I'm ready," he has said. And the season that looks more and more lost every outing.

But let's face it: Williams has probably hurt himself by playing hurt all these years. He said he doesn't use painkillers regularly but he'll continue with anti-inflammatory drugs even though he knows that Alonzo Mourning, whose career was cut short by a transplant-requiring kidney ailment, has cited anti-inflammatories as a contributing factor to his illness.

"Unfortunately, I'm hard-headed," said Williams. "I feel bad for Alonzo. (But) I don't have any kids to worry about in the future right now ... I'm not worried about walking or my kidney or whatever."

That isn't to say that Williams doesn't have a parent who worries about him. His father always told him not to play on the asphalt of Philadelphia's playgrounds; it's bad for the joints.

But not every player heeds his elder's every warning.

"You're from the city, you've got to play on playgrounds."