You Either Die A Villain Or Live Long Enough To Become A Normie, Or, Vince Carter Is Grey's Anatomy

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight

"It's better to burn out than to fade away" - Neil Young, "Hey Hey My My"

"I got one more in me" - Vince Carter

Like anybody who has spent as much as I have reading Bill Simmons, and some people who haven't, I like to compare sports entities to pop culture entities. My favorite example is that Vince Carter is Grey's Anatomy. Both arrived on their respective scenes (Carter joined the NBA in 1998, Grey's began airing in 2005) in a blaze of drama, excitement, and controversy. People had strong opinions about them, both positive and negative. Everyone was saying "McDreamy and McSteamy" and in awe of Vince Carter's 2000 dunk contest performance. And then they just stuck around.

Shonda Rhimes moved on to make shows like Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder, which made Grey's seem positively quaint. Vince Carter became a 3-and-D veteran leader, his dunking crown passed on to Zach Lavine and Aaron Gordon. At 43 years old, after 22 seasons, Vince Carter ended his career as a backup power forward for the Atlanta Hawks, playing 15 minutes a game. Grey's Anatomy is still airing, in its 22nd season; 2.6 million people watched its Season 22 premiere, a little over a tenth of the number who watched Season 3.

Nobody hates Vince Carter or Grey's Anatomy anymore. They aren't really doing anything new, either. They're just fondly remembered by people who now think of them as comforting elder statesmen rather than the exciting bombastic iconoclasts they started as.

I like to think about what this kind of trajectory implies about the future. It seems impossible to imagine, say, NBA Youngboy, or Fboy Island, as old-timey or staid. But Shakespeare was middle or even lowbrow at the time! The Beatles were controversial! Hell, go back and watch the first season of Jersey Shore, derided when it came out in 2010 as the beginning of the end of human civilization. It doesn't look that bad.

I realize that this might sound pessimistic or solipsistic; isn't it so convenient that culture peaked between 2002 and 2012, given that everything before was boring and safe and everything after is decadent and nonsensical? I think it's just really interesting to think about how media and public figures are approached by people learning about them outside of the context in which they existed (Chuck Klosterman has written about this in ways that I like, of course). Sometimes what appears to be clearly the most important thing about someone in the moment ends up not being what is remembered.

Vince Carter was extraordinarily hated and controversial in Toronto for the way he was perceived to have quit on his team in order to force a trade to the Nets. He was pilloried (in ways that, with some hindsight, might have been pretty racist) for a long time. Nobody remembers this now; the Raptors retired his jersey in 2024. Vince Carter's legacy will be three memes: him doing an "it's over" hand gesture during the 2000 dunk contest, the "dunk de la mort" over Frederic Weis, and the "I Got One More In Me" meme before his final season. Or maybe his legacy won't be memes at all, because people won't know what those are.

I'm not sure what the point of this essay is; I think it's just that it is really hard to predict how things will be perceived in the future in different contexts, so maybe we should worry about that less. Very few things will be as important in 10, 20, 30, 100 years as they seem to be now. All we are is dust in the wind, dude. Socrates gets it.

Here are some other athletes as TV shows:

Kobe Bryant - The Office (US)

Undeniable juggernauts both during and after their careers that were and are somewhat overrated (just as Kobe wasn't better than Shaq during their title runs, The Office wasn't better than 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, or Community during that generational NBC Thursday era - you could argue, and I have, that it was the worst of the four). The Office never did anything as bad as Kobe's sexual assault in Colorado, but early seasons Michael Scott could be really hard to watch and people tend to gloss over this now. In death, they are if anything even more revered than in life.

Michael Jordan - Arrested Development

This doesn't really work for a lot of reasons, but "GOAT with an ill-fated comeback" is one sentence. There is not as much of a thing of athletes who are "critically acclaimed" but not actually very good or successful, because that's not as much how sports work.

Allen Iverson - It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Unapologetically themselves, and unapologetically Philadelphia (indeed, struggled to exist outside of it). Completely fearless. Lasted longer than you think, even if by the end the highs are sporadic and the thrill is mostly gone.

Shohei Ohtani - Severance

Existing in two separate worlds in an extraordinarily rare way. Long hiatuses that were worth the wait for unparalleled production.

Caitlin Clark - Friends

A deserving phenomenon that changed the landscape forever, but it's fair to talk about why they were the ones to make that happen when there had been Black people doing the same thing just as well.

Curt Schilling - How I Met Your Mother

The ending and aftermath have ruined their reputations to the point that nobody will admit to liking them at the time, even though we did.

Ashleigh Barty - Flight Of The Conchords

Emerged from Oceania with strong dual abilities (TV/music, tennis/cricket), wowed everyone for a couple years, decided that the endless grind wasn't worth it and left on their own terms

Tiger Woods - Chappelle's Show

Just demolished everyone for a while. Absolutely rocked the world. But now...they just seem a little more fallible.

LeBron James - Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and El Camino

Incredible promise lives up to impossible hype, has a slowly boiling villain arc leading into a second act that is somehow just as good if not better than the first. By the end, his longevity is incredible even if the quality finally dips a little...but there's a goofy heart that didn't come out as much before.

Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez - BoJack Horseman

Unparalleled combination of gleefully goofy and brutally devastating.

Terence Crawford - The Wire

The best, but without the recognition.

Venus and Serena Williams - Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm and Veep

Overpowering, technically brilliant, received massive hype and lived up to it all...and then the second acts (Serena, Larry David on Curb, Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Veep) might have been even better.

Kevin Durant - Community and Rick & Morty

Incredible ability to do the fundamental task (score the basketball and make people laugh). Way too online. Always accused of never being able to win the big one on their own.