An hour and a half prior to tip-off, Vince Carter was sorting through the stack of tickets he was leaving for his old Toronto acquaintances, an arduous errand which required a half hour of his time.

Taking the court about 20 minutes before the game was to begin, Carter was greeted by pestering jeers and chants of “V.C. sucks.”

Every time he touched the ball during Friday night’s game, the heckles continued.

Carter says every time his New Jersey Nets play the Toronto Raptors, it’s “just another game,” but even though this is his third time back to Toronto, the fans don’t see it that way.

Carter was traded to the Nets last December after demanding a move out of Toronto, where he had played his first six NBA seasons.

Toronto fans saw it as a betrayal. They had watched Carter excel into one of the game’s brightest young stars, but struggle with injuries in his latter years as a Raptor.

What also irked them was what seemed to be a lack of commitment to the team. At the beginning of last season, playing for the Raptors, he averaged 15.9 points, 3.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game. For the Nets, he averaged 27.5 points 5.9 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game, dramatic increases in all categories.

After the game, in which he scored 20 points in a 102-92 Nets win, he admitted to being conscious of the boos and chants, but said he was happy to hear them.

“It was beautiful,” he said. “It doesn?t bother me. I enjoy it.”

The atmosphere in the building was far less grating than in Carter’s first return to Toronto in April, when he scored 39 points in a 101-90 Nets victory.

Then, a sold-out crowd arrived an hour before the game. They wore bibs, held up signs, and voiced their opinions perhaps louder than the Air Canada Centre walls had ever heard before. This time, the building was only a third full when Carter walked onto the court, and was about a thousand people short of a sellout. The bibs were minimal, the signs were almost non-existent, and the crowd was generously half as loud.

As the Nets practiced before tip-off, a group of about ten fans gathered behind the basket to cheer on Carter. They wore Carter jerseys and held up an encouraging sign.

And somehow, Carter spotted them amongst the boos and flashed the peace sign.

“Anything you want to say to the Toronto fans at all?” asked a reporter. “Like I said, they must care. If they boo you, it must mean that you meant something.”

“There you go. You asked it and answered it,” Carter said with a stone-cold face.

“Pretend he didn?t answer,” another reporter said. But Carter didn’t bite.






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