PHILADELPHIA VS. TORONTO MILWAUKEE VS. CHARLOTTE SAN ANTONIO VS. DALLAS L.A. LAKERS VS. SACRAMENTO

Wednesday, May 30 A few good games and Carter's rep turns By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com You forget, sometimes, how perceptions change in the aftermath of a single accomplishment. The Bulls only become the Bulls when they finally vanquish the Detroit Pistons. Cassius Clay is a brash punk the night before he fights Sonny Liston; Muhammad Ali becomes a legend the following day. John Elway goes from loser to winner, seemingly overnight, when the Broncos finally get good enough to win the Super Bowl. Carter's big Game 1 trumped Allen Iverson as the Raptors won in Philly. A week ago, Vince Carter was viewed by many as sullen, overhyped, unaccomplished. Then the Raptors win one playoff series, and the clouds lift and life is beautiful. Maybe that's simplistic. But there's also a little truth there. For all the credit that the Charleses, Oakley and Barkley, are getting for their public criticism of the Raptors' Chief Dinosaur, no one put more pressure on Vince Carter to produce as Vince Carter. "I heard through the grapevine what (Barkley) said," Carter told me last Saturday, before Game 1 of the Raptors' series with the Sixers. So, I asked, do you hope Barkley is back on the floor next season? So you can show him who the "girl" really is around here? "Nah. I don't hold grudges," Carter said. "Everyone's entitled to their opinion. It's all up here. I'm self-motivated. Regardless of what anybody said, I was gonna be ready for Game 4 (of the Knicks' series), whether Oakley said it or not, whether Barkley said it or not, or anybody else in the world said it or not. 'Cause I'm a winner. I believe I'm a winner, and I love to win. I love to deliver and see the fans of Toronto win, because they've supported us so well. I wasn't ready to go home, anyway. So I was gonna do anything I had to do to win." He's only been in Canada three years, but it seems like a lifetime. An eternity of bad uniforms and steadily improving teammates and everything that went down with his cousin, Tracy McGrady, last year. And never breaking through in the playoffs. Until now. "I think after I was drafted, it was time to sit there and say 'okay, here's the reality of it all,'" Carter said. "There's a lot of great players and there's a lot of great teams. You just got drafted to a team that's not so great. So you've got to expect it. But how long can you take it? That's just what I said: how long can you take it? So I need to better myself, the other guys will see the work ethic that I have, and they'll want to play with somebody who has a name and who's willing to work and to put the time in, spend time with his teammates, to get them better, to get them better as a team. That's how I approached it. And look at us now." “ There's a lot of great players and there's a lot of great teams. You just got drafted to a team that's not so great. So you've got to expect it. But how long can you take it? That's just what I said: how long can you take it? So I need to better myself, the other guys will see the work ethic that I have, and they'll want to play with somebody who has a name and who's willing to work and to put the time in, spend time with his teammates, to get them better, to get them better as a team. That's how I approached it. And look at us now. ” — Carter It had not been the best of years before last weekend. Carter had been excoriated for supposed boorish behavior while a member of the U.S. Olympic team in Australia last summer. He got in a brief, since-resolved tiff with McGrady around the time that McGrady bolted the Raptors for $93 million of Mouse Money in Orlando. He had a raging case of "jumper's knee" in January that maddened him ("I couldn't elevate ... I was confused"). And when the Raptors fell down 2-1 against the Knicks in the opening round, a year after the Knicks had swept the Raptors in the first round, Oakley let loose with both verbal barrels. "I know he just wants the best for me, and that was his way of saying 'we believe in you; just bring it. That's all we want you to do,'" Carter said. "And I understood that. And I knew that what they said he said and what he said, I had to kind of sort through it and figure it out myself. But for myself, I was gonna be prepared to play. It was Game 4, do or die, and it was Game 5, do or die. I knew I had to step it up. I needed to take the intensity, take my everything to the next level for my teammates." Thirty-two points and one momentum-changing cram later, the Raptors were even with New York. "After the game, he said 'I'm proud of you,'" Carter said. "He said 'that's the way to respond to everybody. Show them who you are and what you can do.' And I appreciated it, for who Oak is and how he is. My first year, he was right there doing the same thing. That's why it didn't bother me. I think everybody expected me to have a comeback, or for it to bother me. But I'm used to it. I've been going through it since I've got here. And it's helped me grow. So why shouldn't it now?" And then, facing a perhaps career-shaping Game 5, Carter played even better. "You learn that you can do it, that anything's possible," Carter said. "That if you keep your head and just play the way you've been playing, what got you there ... I just believed that if I continued to play and just believed that the way I was playing was fine." Ironically, while Carter was struggling, cousin Tracy had his playoff play being lauded just seven days ago. Carter watched McGrady dominate in a losing effort against the Bucks, and he's certainly given some thought to how good Toronto would be had it been able to keep McGrady in the fold. But McGrady is gone and Carter is still there, and the feelings he has for his current teammates are real and genuine. He really does want to be one of the guys with them. It really does bother him when people insist he pull away, put the team on his shoulders, because it separates him from his teammates. And yet, of course, he does several million dollars worth of endorsements yearly that do exactly that. "I just want to be a normal guy," Carter said. "My main objective is to let these guys know that when I step on the floor, I'm gonna do the job, regardless of all the commercials, regardless of all the things that are coming my way, I'm still gonna do what I need to do." “ I just want to be a normal guy. My main objective is to let these guys know that when I step on the floor, I'm gonna do the job, regardless of all the commercials, regardless of all the things that are coming my way, I'm still gonna do what I need to do. ” — Carter No one would argue that the Raptors are a finished product, though. And with the Grizzlies leaving Vancouver, Carter all of a sudden not only becomes important to Toronto, but important to Canada as a whole. There's been talk that he chafes at having to carry basketball in a country known for its puck addiction. "It's sad to see (the Grizzlies) go," he said. "I enjoyed the competition. It kind of reminded me -- not quite -- of the Duke-Carolina rivalry. But on the other hand, it's a chance for Toronto to have Canada on your side ... by Vancouver leaving and us playing well, we have a lot of firepower. I just appreciate (the interest). They could not know who I am and not care less, really. I accept the challenge." And, of course, there's the eternal question of where Carter will be playing in a year. The Raptors would love to sign him to an extension this summer and end all the speculation, but Carter isn't committing either way. It's likely he wants to see if Toronto can keep Antonio Davis, a free agent this summer. He's seen the year-long soap opera in Sacramento with Chris Webber, and it's not what he wants to go through next season. But his actions will trump his words to management. "I said 'let's let it unfold, let it happen,'" Carter said. "I told them, 'I understand you want me to stay, and that's fine with me. But don't put the pressure on me.' That's when it gets frustrating and it gets hard. 'Cause you get the pressure from one side, the Raptors, and then you also are gonna get the pressure from the fans and the media, which is another added pressure there. So I said just be patient, and be like I do. Just believe." What about Bob? Bob Whitsitt insists he thought long and hard about letting Mike Dunleavy coach the final year of his contract. "It would have been easier for me," Whitsitt said late Tuesday night. "But I had to think about what was best for this franchise." Pippen Wallace The problem with that statement is that Dunleavy was perfectly willing to coach the Blazers next season, even with no assurances past then. Perfectly willing to come back and try again with Scottie Pippen and Rasheed Wallace. "I wanted to come back and try to get the ship righted," Dunleavy told me by phone on Wednesday afternoon, before his evening appearance on TNT's playoff broadcast. "As much as we went through, as late as March 10th, we still had the best record in the west. Then we added Rod (Strickland) and Detlef (Schrempf), and it kind of messed up our mindset. Rod came to practice on time every day and he worked hard. He didn't do anything wrong. But it turned on us." Unsaid: Why on earth did the team president saddle me with more headaches when we were going so good? “ I don't think you're gonna be able to trade a lot of guys on that team. With the salary cap restrictions we have, you're gonna have most of them back. But the one thing about having them back would have been that you know them a little better. We haven't had that luxury around here. We changed our team every year. ” — Dunleavy But Whitsitt clearly knew what he's not willing to say publicly -- that those players weren't willing to come back next season with Dunleavy at the helm. That players thought his offense was unimaginative and his rotations uncertain. That the Portland braintrust blamed Dunleavy for not developing Jermaine O'Neal. And thus, the axe. The Blazers' president won't disclose what he told Dunleavy at their very long Tuesday meeting that ended with Dunleavy's ouster. "I talked with Mike about a lot of things, pro and con, about the season," Whitsitt says. "But I want to keep those private." So I asked him if he thinks his team as currently constructed is good enough to win a championship. "All of us who are out of the playoffs would probably tend to say no, but I don't want to really address that now," he said. "We're going to look at everything." For his part, Dunleavy said he would have come back with this season's crew and tried again. "I don't think you're gonna be able to trade a lot of guys on that team," he said. "With the salary cap restrictions we have, you're gonna have most of them back. But the one thing about having them back would have been that you know them a little better. We haven't had that luxury around here. We changed our team every year." For his part, Whitsitt did address the one statement attributed to him that stuck in my craw all season: did he indeed say, when asked about creating team chemistry, "I'm not a chemistry major" -- a rather flippant abdication of his own responsibility to put a team together? "I did say it," Whitsitt admitted. "But there was a context. I had talked to (reporters) for five minutes before about how important chemistry is, how I knew you couldn't win without it, and that I thought this team had good chemistry. I emphasized how important it was. And at the end of the five minutes of talking about chemistry, the guy asked me a follow-up question about chemistry again and I said 'look, I'm not a chemistry major. But chemistry is important.' And somebody took that little snippet out and ran with it." Fair enough. But Whitsitt has to take some of the blame for this team's chemical imbalance. His next coaching hire could well be his last best shot in the Rose City. Miller Dunleavy will spend the next few weeks figuring out what he's going to do. He hasn't been contacted yet by old friend Jim Paxson in Cleveland about the Cavs' head vacancy, though he knows and likes Andre Miller ("he's a terrific young player") and thinks Chris Mihm has a future. He's got $3 million coming his way from the Blazers that should get him through the year and he'll be able to see Mike Jr. try to help and defend Duke's national championship in person. He wants to coach again, even after all that happened. "We were right there, within a fraction of the best winning percentage ever in Portland," he said. "We never lost a playoff series in Portland where we had home court advantage. And we won a few when we didn't have it. As a group, we could have bounced back." I asked Dunleavy if he thought he was being made a scapegoat for everything that went so very wrong. "I'm certainly the easiest guy to let go," he said. "Out of all parties concerned, it's easier to change the coach. Who knows what other changes are going to be made? But the one person we know isn't going to be changed is Bob." Around The League Sources indicate the Cavaliers badly want to talk with Del Harris about their head coaching job. Cleveland's braintrust was asking colleagues of Del's all about him at the Nike Desert Classic in Phoenix last week. The question is whether Delmer, a finalist for the Cleveland job the last time it was available, wants it. He's getting significant coin in Dallas as Don Nelson's defensive coordinator and didn't want to be the interim guy in Big D earlier this season while Nellie was recovering from prostate cancer surgery. P.J. Carlesimo will continue his coast-to-coast television life for now. He says he hasn't been contacted by either the Cavs or Pistons. But that doesn't mean the ex-Blazers and Warriors coach wouldn't like one more shot. "I'd love to coach again," Carlesimo said from his San Francisco home. "In reality, I should be more proactive than I am about it. My clear choice would be to get back in." For now, he'll keep doing NBC studio work on the weekends and analyst work for the Spurs during the week. My man Gil Parmele here at ESPN is the first person, I believe, to point out the following fact: if the Lakers finish off the Kings in the second round, Phil Jackson will have won his 18th straight playoff series, which will tie an all-time league record. Jackson is currently one series behind Red Auerbach, who didn't lose a postseason series from March, 1959, to March, 1967. Incredible. Probable top-three pick Shane Battier has signed with Washington, D.C. attorney Lon Babby of the Williams and Connolly firm. Babby represents fellow Dookies Grant Hill and Christian Laettner. Several league scouting types are flying to Europe this weekend to take a gander at Pau Gasol, a 7-1 forward who plays for a Spanish team. Scouts will fly down to see him after looking at the European Final Four in France. Gasol is 20 and can shoot it, though, scouts say, not quite as well as Dirk Nowitzki. But Gasol has yet to apply for the draft; he wants more certainty on where he's going to be drafted. A buyout from his Spanish team is also an issue. But if he does come out, he could go in the top half of the first round. Sonics are closing in on naming Pistons' personnel director Rick Sund their general manager. The team is looking to pad its basketball staff with team president Wally Walker adding business responsibilities to his title. Sund hasn't had much to do in Detroit since Joe Dumars took over last year. Nuggets still searching for a GM; Portland's Mark Warkentien pulled his name out of contention last week. Indiana's David Kahn still is in the running, and Nets' GM John Nash also could be interested. Add Nike: USC guard Jeff Trepagnier and Iowa State forward Martin Rancik helped themselves last week with strong performances at the tournament. Arizona forward Gene Edgerson also had a good week. But the overall talent level had a lot of personnel types out on the back nine most of the week. Kansas' Kenny Gregory posted the top vertical at the tournament: 39 1/2 inches. 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